Product Description

Former senator George McGovern and William R. Polk, a leading authority on the Middle East, offer a detailed plan for a speedy troop withdrawal from Iraq.

During the phased withdrawal, to begin on December 31, 2006, and to be completed by June 30, 2007, they recommend that the Iraq government engage the temporary services of an international stabilization force to police the country. Other elements in the withdrawal plan include an independent accounting of American expenditures of Iraqi funds, reparations to Iraqi civilians for lives lost and property destroyed, immediate release of all prisoners of war, the closing of American detention centers, and offering to void all contracts for petroleum exploration, development, and marketing made during the American occupation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1281857 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-03
• Released on: 2006-10-03
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .40 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

From Booklist
Despite the neoconservative mantra that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq now would be a cut-and-run move that would encourage our enemies, McGovern, Democratic icon, and Polk, former professor and presidential advisor during the Cuban missile crisis, argue that immediate withdrawal is the sensible thing to do. Calling the war "a terrible and useless waste," they maintain that it is bankrupting the U.S. economy, increasing the threat of terrorist attacks on the U.S., and continuing to cost lives as U.S. soldiers return with life-altering and -threatening injuries and maladies. After offering a historical overview of the Middle East and other failed attempts by the British to graft a Western-style democracy in Iraq, McGovern and Polk offer a proposal for a phased withdrawal beginning in December 2006 to be completed by June 2007. The plan includes a two-year commitment to help Iraq rebuild and recover, training of an Iraqi national police force, and construction of a U.S. embassy outside the Green Zone to begin normalizing relations with Iraq. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
George McGovern, the Democratic Party's nominee for president in 1972, served in the House of Representatives from 1957 to 1961 and in the Senate for eighteen years. He was the president of the Middle East Policy Council in Washington, D.C., for six years and then served as ambassador to the UN Agencies on Food and Agriculture in Rome under President Clinton. He holds the Distinguished Flying Cross for service as a bomber pilot in World War II and the Presidential Medal of Freedom for humanitarian service.

William R. Polk, the author of Understanding Iraq, taught at Harvard until becoming the member of the State Department's Policy Planning Council responsible for the Middle East in 1961. He served as head of the interdepartmental task force on the Algerian war and was a member of the crisis management subcommittee during the Cuban missile crisis. After leaving government, he became professor of history at the University of Chicago and president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs.