Excerpt
One of the most important figures in America’s road to war in Iraq delivered a blunt assessment Monday night of the Bush administration’s troop surge.
The surge has not worked, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told 1,400 business and political leaders attending the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry’s annual dinner in Derry Twp.
The window of opportunity is narrowing, Powell said. If Iraq’s government isn’t standing on its own within six to eight months, American troops will have to come home, said the man whose historic argument to the United Nations in 2003 that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction was arguably the critical moment in the run-up to the American invasion.
"The surge that we are undertaking right now has had some success in reducing the violence, but that wasn’t the purpose of the surge," Powell told his audience at the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center.
The purpose was to give the Iraqi government time to stand up, Powell said. "So far, the surge is not a success, even if Gen. (David) Petraeus’ part of it is working," he said. Petraeus is the U.S. commander in Iraq.
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