Can our troops come home from Iraq now?

Can we pull our military out of Iraq now? President Bush has said that we would leave if the Iraqi government asks us to leave and that when the Iraqi stand up we will stand down.

BUSHRA JUHI of the Associated Press just filed the following report:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saturday that the Iraqi army and police are capable of keeping security in the country when American troops leave "any time they want," though he acknowledged the forces need further weapons and training.

The embattled prime minister sought to show confidence at a time when congressional pressure is growing for a withdrawal and the Bush administration reported little progress had been made on the most vital of a series of political benchmarks it wants al-Maliki to carry out.

Al-Maliki said difficulty in enacting the measures was "natural" given Iraq's turmoil.

But one of his top aides, Hassan al-Suneid, rankled at the assessment, saying the U.S. was treating Iraq like "an experiment in an American laboratory." He sharply criticised the U.S. military, saying it was committing human rights violations, embarassing the Iraqi government with its tactics and cooperating with "gangs of killers" in its campaign against al-Qaida in Iraq.

link the the entire article

The American people want us out of Iraq, the Iraqi people want us out and now the government of Iraq says that could get along just fine without us. It is time for us to go.