We need to make it clear that we will withdraw from Iraq within 6 to 9 months - so that the Iraqis will know that they must stand up and defend the opportunity given to them.

As a scientist, my attention became totally focused on global warming some 15 years ago by the elegant and powerful measurements of carbon dioxide trapped in ice cores taken as much as 2 miles deep from the great East Antarctica ice sheet.

The scientists who do climate research understand that much of the ever increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere since 1850 must be attributed to burning those fossil fuels to produce the energy that drives industrialization.

Since 1850, burning of fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gas has increased 100 times to produce energy as the world has industrialized to serve the world's more than 6 billion and growing population.

We all know that China is industrializing at a growth rate of 8 to 10 percent per year. China is on track to pass the U.S. as the largest economy in the world in 20 to 25 years, and China is determined to give its people a chance at this high standard of living that we enjoy.

So a truthful assessment of how America is doing in the war on terror as a result of President Bush's war on Iraq is that we have been set back by decades.

The conduct of President Bush's war of choice has been plagued with incompetent civilian leadership decisions that have cost many lives and rendered the war on and occupation of Iraq a strategic policy disaster for the United States.