I appreciate the intentions of Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor, who wants to set a deadline for withdrawal of US forces from Iraq but he wants “only” the President, Congress and Iraqi government to know the date.

Let’s see: that’s 535 members of Congress, including one Muslim Representative from Minnesota, the Iraqi government who are iffy at best and the president, whom I trust we could trust with the secret.

So we actually have a handful of people we could trust with this information and the rest would be blabbermouths.

Sounds like a plan to me. 8-|

In one of the more unusual proposals to emerge in the Senate debate on Iraq withdrawal, Sen. Mark Pryor wants to keep any plans for bringing troops home a secret.

The Arkansas Democrat is a key holdout on his party’s proposal to approve $122 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while setting a goal of March 31, 2008, for winding up military operations in Iraq. Unlike the plan’s Republican opponents, Pryor wants a withdrawal deadline of some kind. He just doesn’t want anyone outside the White House, Congress and the Iraqi government to know what it is.

“My strong preference would be to have a classified plan and a classified timetable that should be shared with Congress,” Pryor said yesterday. A public deadline would tip off the enemy, “who might just bide their time and wait for us to leave,” he said. “Then you’d have chaos and mayhem and instability.”

Pryor said a classified plan would be provided by the president, shepherded by Senate committees and ultimately shared with Congress and Iraqi leaders. He is confident that the plan would remain secret, because Congress is entrusted with secrets “all the time.”

I doubt the secret would stay secret longer than it takes for a member of Congress to call a major newspaper or some traitor in the Iraqi government to spread the word.

How many leaks of top secret information have we seen spread across the front pages of the nation’s major newspapers, enabling the terrorists to adjust for the new plan?

As I said, I appreciate his intentions, but I do think he’s being naive.

Written by ~J~

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