Posted by
Grampus on Saturday, January 27, 2007 5:17:07 PM
There is no way I can bring myself to supporting McCain (RINO) or Gulianni and Romney (Both too liberal for my taste).
Newt
Gingrich would be my first choice for the Republican nomination for
President in 2008. However, if Newt doesn’t run…Duncan Hunter is my
next choice. He is beginning to look more and more like a Reaganite
candidate. If he can do well in the early primaries and caucuses, he
would really become a viable candidate. The following article is from
his web site and what he is saying makes a lot of sense to me.
Duncan supports War on Terror
By ALLISON STEELE
Concord Monitor staff
U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican presidential contender
who has served as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee for
the past four years, adamantly defended the Bush administration's
handling of the war in Iraq yesterday. It's too soon to tell whether
the American occupation has been a failure, Hunter said.
"When a
person says, 'Are we winning or losing?' I would say, this is like a
cancer operation," Hunter, of California, said yesterday in an
interview with a board of Monitor editors. "You don't know until five
years after the operation. And if five years from now, after the
Americans leave, we have a dictator who takes over Iraq who's worse
than Saddam Hussein, if the cancer comes back, then you know it hasn't
been successful.”
Hunter is a Vietnam veteran who practiced law
for several years before he was elected to the House in 1980. He
represents California's 52nd Congressional District, which consists of
eastern and northern San Diego County, and he is known in his home
state for his focus on border control legislation.
In the
meantime, Hunter said, U.S. troops must continue training Iraqi troops
and building a military that can support the country's free government.
U.S. forces are in the second phase of the three-step pattern America
has followed for 60 years in bringing freedom to other nations, he said.
"First,
you stand up a free government," he said. "You then stand up a military
apparatus capable of protecting that free government. And number three,
the Americans leave. . . . And right now, we're in the second phase,
which is by far the most difficult."
Hunter is a Vietnam veteran
who practiced law for several years before he was elected to the House
in 1980. He represents California's 52nd Congressional District, which
consists of eastern and northern San Diego County, and he is known in
his home state for his focus on border control legislation.
Hunter,
who announced his candidacy in October, said he is running for
president because national security continues to be the country's top
issue. War is a clumsy process, he said, and many of those who
criticize the actions of former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld
and President Bush are operating under the assumption that casualties
could have been avoided if different decisions had been made.
"The
falsehood is that somehow they could have done it better and that
somehow war could be conducted more painlessly and more effortlessly
and with less collateral damage," Hunter said. "I reject the idea that
there's a smooth road that could have been taken and that because
things haven't been smooth, there have been these major mistakes."
Hunter
also outlined his plan for moving through the war's current phase. By
his estimation, 20,000 Iraqi troops have been trained and are now
stationed in the more peaceful provinces of the nation. He recently
recommended that the president move those troops into Baghdad and the
surrounding areas. The Iraqi troops need combat experience, Hunter
said, and a sense of unit cohesion. It would also be beneficial to have
people who speak the language in those urban areas, he said.
Hunter was noncommittal on the question of sending more U.S. troops to Iraq.
"It
depends what they do with them," he said. "You got 132,000 now, we
usually have about 150,000. So 20,000 more people is within the
historic number that we've had there."
More important, he said,
American forces should start using the leverage they have over the
Iraqis: Their skills in precision strikes, surveillance capabilities,
intelligence and special operations.
"We should operate off our
leverage, and the Iraqis should be the people who operate in the
cities, in Baghdad and the villages, and are engaged with the
population," Hunter said. "That utilizes the best aspects of the Iraqi
forces. They understand the language, and they don't have to be
high-tech to be forces in urban situations."
Hunter also weighed
in on global warming, saying that regardless of what the studies say,
the U.S. should explore alternative fuel sources for use by the
Department of Defense. The military has an interest in being able to
run its operations off a renewable source, he said.
"Few people
in global warming can tell you exactly what's happening," he said. "And
there is a difference in opinion as to how fast because ice ages have
come and gone, how much of the country would be warming, how much the
glaciers are receding - how much of that is attributable to mankind,
and how much of it is attributable to the natural cycle? But I don't
think you have to answer that question to do what I've recommended. I
think we have lots of reasons to be energy independent."
Entering a race that promises to be crowded with bigger names, Hunter will have to work to separate himself from the pack.
"There's
nothing special about me," he said yesterday. "But there's something
very special about the American people. And I'd like to serve the
American people and lead this nation. I think this is a great country
where ordinary people can be in positions of leadership. I'm pretty
ordinary."
Grampus