1 Hey Vickie,
 
Stamping out insurgence is kind of like stamping out a gasoline fire.  It does not get you any positive results and only ends up causing more damage.
 
The same people who today stress how pulling out of Iraq would cause horrific bloodshed are the same people who have been wrong about everything from WMD to the insurgency being in the last throws.  Why on earth after all the poor judgement to date would you believe anything they say about a withdrawl?
 
And even if the civil war is blown wide open - maybe that is what is necessary for the various sides to come to some sort of political settlement.  In fact, I would argue, our occupation / policing of their affairs keeps this thing from being settled once and for all.'
 
This all boils down to one thing and one thing only: ego.  Some American's just cannot accept the fact that this war is lost, and they cannot bring themselves to the realization that Bush has and will always be incompetent.  To the 28% that still support him, he is divine, while the rest of us see a reckless and stubborn man who has spent his whole life creating one giant mess after another - with someone else always having to clean up the mess.

2 So Bo, If we have lost and we are to withdraw, just what conditions have we secured for out retreat.  Who negotiated the end of the war with al-Qaeda and what can we expect? What I see is a congress too weak to actually declare war and also stupid enough to withdraw without a proper agreement.  What would you suggest, unconditional surrender? If not how and under what conditions would you suggest a cease fire and or surrender.  You can't just walk off.  Well maybe you can, but then what security do you have?nbsp; You have a fake peace where you are just wating to be attacked by an enemy who never accepted that the war was over.  I don't mind losing in an honorable fashion.  But how do you see that working, suggestions? Then what to you tell the Iraqis and the rest of the ME who thirst for freedom and depend on us? We were going to quit supporting despotic regimes that oppress you and help you attain freedom, but that did not go so well so we are calling back the Baathists to restore order at the end of a blade?

3 Bo.  Your arguments are classical argument fallacy. "If the liar says the sun will come up tomorrow, then it won't- because he's a liar."  Presenting your tripe, backed up with illogic, as a reason to initiate a new killing fields is evil.  But I bet you deny that evil exists (while in the same mentally disconnected breath of denial claim that Chimpy McHaliburtion is evil). You and yours don't hope that Bush knows what he is doing, or that he will get it right- you root against him... and me... and us... and yourself.  Evil indeed.

Vicki, we not only owe it to them (our Iraqi brothers and sisters), we owe it to ourselves.

4 BO:
try looking up the time lines of other insurrections that have occurred in history, you will see that they take a little longer than your average CNN attention span.
It is even harder to quell because most of those insurgents were stopped using techniques that are not even on the table anymore - e.g "draining the swamp" which is the forceable relocation of all males that are military age (e.g using Concentration camps like used in the Boar War and the Malaysian Emergency)

5 Davec,
 
True - but they called for absolute ethnic cleansing solutions in most cases to work.  Any idea what sort of backlash across the entire Middle East or any muslim dominated region will have? 
 
Besides the cost benefit analysis of this occupation over the next 10 years is not likely good for the economy or financial health of the country.
 
Time to cut losses - no matter how bruised the ego, and take frustrations out on the incompetent nincompoops that managed this whole affair.  I think they used to refer to it as "tar and feathering."  Worked quite well at keeping the leaders straight afterwards too ;-)
 

6 er - I don't think the British were Ethnic cleansing, they were imprisoning military age males.
Bo: imagine what would happened in World War II if we looked at the dollar price? sometimes the need has to outweight the cost?
It simply is not the case of cutting losses - the losses will be measured by thousands of Iraqi people slaughtered, most likely Kurds and Sunni Muslims not a dollar amount. It isn't the case of "losing" - it no longer is an option to walk away.

7 Besides the cost benefit analysis of this occupation over the next 10
years is not likely good for the economy or financial health of the
country.

At least you're not cynical and self-indulgent.  You screaming pussy.  There is nothing more important than you, is there?  No idea (like freedom) or principle that you would not sell out for your fucking boat payment.  You shallow, ass felching shit-clown.  YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING CIVILIZATION IS UNDER ASSAULT, FROM PLATO UP TO YOUR SAINTED FUCKING CLINTONS!

Suffice it to say, you're missing the point.

8 Morgenholz,
 
You are completely over-reacting.  Our civilization, democratic institutions and everything that underpins our way of life is not in any danger of being snuffed out any time soon.  The neocons who brought you this war would like you to believe that they are - but they all have dual loyalties and cannot be trusted to make recommendations that are in the best interests of America now can they?
 
If we pull out, Iraquies will have no choice but to step up to the plate and start to take control of their own affairs.  Right now we are nurturing an on-going dependency on our own blood and money.  Nowhere in the constitution does it say it is America's responsibility to spread democracy and freedom.  This is utopian dreaming not unlike the lofty bolshevic ideals of the last century to spread revolution around the globe.  We all know how that ended.
 

9 Davec,
 
I hate the WWII analogies for one reason:  Germany and Japan had huge millitaries which they used to physically bring down sovereign nations.  Terrorism is a tactic used by those who have no standing armies.  So the WWII analogies are largely false.
 
Whatever the fallout of our pull-out, it is possible to contain the damage and not have it affect life domestically.  Just like Vietnam, America survived the defeat and went on to win the war - the cold war that is, through non-direct military intervention.  The same model stands the best chance of working with respect to Al Queda and Islamic fundamentalism.  On this most independent experts agree:  there is no military solution to this problem.  In fact, the militaristic approach is counter-productive in the long run at managing militant Islam because they will never fight us on the battlefield on our terms.
 
I also find it interesting that more and more retired / displaced Generals are speaking up and supporting Murtha's plan of strategic redeployment.  It certainly makes more sense than "the surge" strategy which almost everyone who does not sip neocon Kool-aid admits is simply a strategy to pass this problem on to the next president.

10 Bo:
Of course America survived the "defeat" of Vietnam, however around a hundred and sixty thousand Vietnamese that were tortured in re-education camps did not, along with the million plus people that fled Vietnam and Cambodia:
http://www.dartcenter.org/dartaward/2002/hm3/01.html
What will be the results of pulling out of Iraq?
You seem to believe large conventional militaries are more of a threat than terrorists using asymmetric warfare? this is a weak assessment, If another attack like September 11th occurred again, what state would we hold responsible? what if the people responsible were hiding in a sovereign nuclear power like Pakistan? can you say the presence of 20 terrorists is a casus belli ? --evidently not due to the fact that all tier 1 terrorists in Al-Quada are believed to be in Pakistan.

Old Generals are still fighting the last War, they are completely irrelevant in that sense. Iraq is 4th Generation warfare which is why our Military easily defeated the conventional Iraqi Military but has had problems fighting a guerilla war which is completely slanted in the favor of the insurgents. Our Military has invested it's power in air superiority which works very well against conventional armies (Gulf War I) but is completely useless against guerilla war (Vietnam/Lebanon 2006) where your enemy is using civilians for cover, or is completely dug into fortified bunkers. It is for this reason that Rumsfield wanted to revamp the military, in order to prepare for wars where you do not fight a standing army, the same Generals thought he was wrong then, but how many road side bombs and ambushes have claimed the lives of American personnel which are the tenants of 4GW.

Only people who think "Political" think that the surge is a political reason. The problems in Iraq and the "Triangle of Death" is because for years we have cleared out specific areas: Mosul, Tikkrit, Fallujah et. al and have then moved back out of those areas allowing insurgents and terrorists alike to re-amass before again sending in forces to root them out. The Surge should be seen as a "Take and Hold" strategy that denies an area of operation for insurgents/terrorists by keeping forces in areas they have already cleared. Many people would point that this means we should have had more troops to begin with, however those people probably have not read much about Algeria where France lost eighteen thousand soldiers, and had over sixty thousand wounded. More does not make "better" but the U.S does need more people to hold places that have been cleared.
The people drinking the "Kool-Aid" are those who use political grounds to assess a war, try history, it is a much better indicator.

11 "Of course America survived the "defeat" of Vietnam, however around a hundred and sixty thousand Vietnamese that were tortured in re-education camps did not, along with the million plus people that fled Vietnam and Cambodia:
http://www.dartcenter.org/dartaward/2002/hm3/01.html
What will be the results of pulling out of Iraq?"
 
Maybe the same thing - who knows.  But this is still no reason to send more young Americans to their deaths now is it?  After WWII my grandfather and 2 uncles were shipped off by Stalin along with millions of others to Siberian death camps from which only 1 returned (my grandfather - surprise surprise).  At no time did they or others like them expect America to prolong the war in order to save them.    
 
Your comment about old generals is interesting for I would say "the take hold" strategy is a classic old general's approach to trying to gain the upper hand.

12 Bo: I wonder what life would be like now for the United States if our allies measured their soldiers lives against those of the people they were assisting: What if the French had decided that no American, was worth the life of a French Soldier in the War against the British?
Our Generals have sent thousands of troops into deadly grounds to find two missing soldiers, if twenty were killed in that period, by your own measurement it isn't worth it? and it should be called off -- after all Twenty Americans, are worth more than two right?
The "Take & Hold" Strategy was also familiar to the Romans, are you suggesting then that a Centurion could run todays Military, because he's familiar with a tactic? 4GW warfare is a completely different beast, and while some of the measurements to defeat it are old, most of them were originally used to destroy conventional armies and have been adapted to the new 4GW doctrine. The army of tomorrow is switching it's strengths to fighting guerilla wars, rather than conventional militaries. It's the future.