Dear Senator McCain,

The 'biggest' immediate challenge that I see to America would be the negative effect that an abrupt pullout of American troops from Iraq could cause.

If Iraq collapsed, as South Viet Nam collapsed in 1975, and all economic ties and interests with Iraq were suddenly severed...I believe this could have a backlash effect on the American economy, already in recession in certain sectors...plunging the United States into a deep depression such as the nation has never seen before.

Why?

Because we have simply reached the limit of our financial where-with-all. We are too overextended. We are paying too much interest on refinanced debt of the national debt and Iraq has been virtually financed by extending more debt to debt.

No longer are we able to invest in the liberation and freedom of other people without first making sure that America gets a return on that investment. We've got to stop treating our national treasury like a charity slush fund for the world. Charity begins at home.

Iraq needs to be made responsible for getting us to assist it with its war with itself.

Meaning: the war from its inception had little or nothing to do with 9/11 or the 'War on Terror'. It had a lot to do with Iraqi malcontents themselves sucking us into a war with Saddam based on their insistence that Saddam harbored 'weapons of mass destruction.'

Our interests, of course, were that Saddam sat on one of the largest remaining reservoirs of oil in the world and we didn't want that oil to eventually pass to Saddam's enemies in his demise, enemies who were perceived at the time to be far more dangerous than Saddam himself.

The 'second' biggest danger I see to America right now is that if we 'did' secure Iraq and after all was said and done, we found that private oil companies had run off with all the profits from all the oil in Iraq, leaving the American treasury high and dry to pick up the bill that paid for their access to those resources.

The GAO and others on the ground in Iraq, must make sure that this doesn't happen because it would precipitate the same kind of effect on the viability of America's financial future as an abrupt withdrawl from Iraq could create...a withdrawl such as the Democratic candidates would have us do.

Sincerely, 

James Carder
- a friend of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska - Post finalized on: 11/04/08 at 1631 hours