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I'm not for premature troop withdrawl. We made this mess, and we have to see it out. But, no one has any idea how long we may be stuck at this troop strength in Iraq. And, it's impacting our reservists. It's impacting our ability to recruit. And, no politician is going to survive a "draft".




We're basically on the same page here, Fatty. Ironically, so is Obama. Or, at least he was on Monday. If you read The Senate Hearing Transcripts, you'll notice that Bam-Bam has suddenly moved towards the center on the war. He outright admitted to Petraeus and Crocker that "“You are cleaning up the mess..." made by Bush and Rummy. He admitted security has improved, rejected "precipitous" withdrawal and envisioned a situation he might accept:

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"If ... our criteria is a messy, sloppy status quo but there's not, you know, huge outbreaks of violence; there's still corruption, but the country is struggling along, but it's not a threat to its neighbors and it's not an Al Qaeda base, that seems to me an achievable goal within a measurable time frame."



For a guy who has attacked the Bull Dyke over her flip flops on the war, that's a Helluva feat of gymnastics. An overnight reversal of his entire platform. And utterly transparent.

But back to the idea of a "plan." My point is simply that these yahoos were plotting to invade Iraq before they even stole the election in 2000. You'd think, in all that time (up to five years, really) they could've come up with something that would've worked. They didn't, went in anyway and we're stuck with the consequenses.

Yeah, they should've left well enough alone. Iran would have been stuck wedged between Saddaam on the left and a much more strongly US occupied Afghanistan on the right.

But it didn't happen that way. All we can do now is try to find a way out of there without losing. "Winning" is unlikey, but not losing is do-able, if we don't pull out with our heads between our legs. I think Petreaus is the guy who can pull it off. Let's see.