To the editor:

So how does the Bush Administration plan to “win” in Iraq?

Step One: Launch a highly partisan (and meaningless) “debate” in Congress, replete with the Republican refrains of “cut and run” and “if you don’t support the war, you’re for al-Qaida.”

Step Two: Include a “support our troops” statement in the resolution offered, again, a transparent attempt to say that if you oppose the war (as over 60 percent of Americans now do, according to a recent Washington Post and ABC News poll), you are somehow against the troops; as well as a lame try to divert attention from the fact that there is no real plan other than an open-ended deployment of our nation’s finest in a failed state of our own making.

Let’s be honest here: The Republican “support” for the troops is nothing more than using them as props to support the right-wing leadership and to maintain their tenuous grip on power in Washington. But then, that has been the case for over four years now and was the impetus behind the congressional “debate.” I guess the “threat” of gay marriage didn’t agitate the nation as they had hoped it would, and they needed something further to rile up their “base.”

It is sad that this is what our nation has become in five short years.

Andrew Duncan,

Lawrence