Mr

Three hundred and fifty billion dollars and thousands of lives later we are still fighting a meaningless war. The U.S. invaded Iraq to get rid of their weapons of mass destruction, to help fight the war on terrorism, and to get rid of Saddam to set up a democracy. We have clearly failed in our attempt to achieve any of these so there is no reason that we should still be in Iraq. The War in Iraq is wrong and we should pull out our troops in immediately.

The main reason that we went into Iraq was to take out Saddam Hussein because the Bush Administration argued that he had connection to Al-Qaeda. Saddam could have been building weapons of mass destruction that he would aid these terrorist with. Before invading we told them that we were going to inspect there country for these weapons. They would not cooperate and insisted that we inspect only under their conditions. Naturally, the U.S. got angry because they were not allowed to do what they wanted. We proceed to invade Iraq and find out that they do not have any nuclear weapons nor planned

on making any. Not only do we find out that he has no weapons, but there is no evidence that even links Saddam to Al-Qaeda.

Now that we have invaded Iraq our goal is to set up a democracy. By overthrowing Saddam it was supposed to lead to the spreading of democracy in the Middle East, decreasing terrorism overall. Bush has freed the Iraqis from Saddam but the government that was put in place is failing. A democracy was supposed to be created but it is not giving the citizens true freedom; they actually are only free to do things that we allow them to do. This is the only way that it is going to be while our army is there. Our army is supposed to be there to protect them, but what we really are doing is controlling them. Also, suicide bombing and gunfights are constantly going on and the everyday living conditions of the citizens has worsened since the start of the war.

Not only have we completely failed in what we were trying to accomplish, but it was and is illegal for us to be there. Countries in the United Nations have to abide by certain laws before attacking another country. These laws are found in the United Nations Charter. The U.S. twisted an interpretation of one of the articles so that they were able to attack Iraq. In Article 51, it states that nations have the "right of, individual or collective self defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security." This means that the U.S. must have been under attack by Iraq, who was not even a threat. They did not have an army that would have been able to launch an attack or missiles that could reach America. Because the Bush Administration did not have a legit reason to go to war with Iraq, most of the other countries in the United Nation do not support what the U.S. is doing.

Now that we can see that we never should have invaded Iraq, the question is whether we should immediately leave Iraq or stay there until we reach a point that would allow us to gradually withdraw our troops. I am on the side of removing our troops immediately because the people there want us to. We have created a democracy in which the citizens of Iraq are able to vote it would be hypocritical to not abide by their chose in wanting us to leave.

More than two thousand American soldiers and one hundred thousand Iraqis have died so far from our war in Iraq. The most important reason for pulling out of Iraq immediately is to put an end to the daily rising death toll. If we continue to fight the war there will never be a winner because only losers result from war. What the U.S. should do is take more of a diplomatic approach to