LOS ANGELES - One of America's premier newspapers wrote Sunday that the time has come to bring US troops home from Iraq, as support across the United States for continuing US military operations there continues to erode.
"After four years of war, more than 350 billion dollars spent and 3,363 US soldiers killed and 24,310 wounded, it seems increasingly obvious that an Iraqi political settlement cannot be achieved in the shadow of an indefinite foreign occupation," the moderately left-of-center newspaper wrote.
"Having invested so much in Iraq, Americans are likely to find disengagement almost as painful as war. But the longer we delay planning for the inevitable, the worse the outcome is likely to be," the LA Times editorial read.
"The time has come to leave."
The paper wrote that the US government "should immediately declare its intention to begin a gradual troop drawdown, starting no later than the fall."
It added that a current "surge" of tens of thousands of additional US troops in Iraq does not appear to have turned the tide of sectarian violence and insurgent attacks.
"This newspaper reluctantly endorsed the US troop surge as the last, best hope for stabilizing conditions so that the elected Iraqi government could assume full responsibility for its affairs. But we also warned that the troops should not be used to referee a civil war," the daily wrote.
"That, regrettably, is what has happened."
05/06/2007 14:17 GMT