PREDICTION OF HOW IT WILL END IN IRAQ Unlike most Americans--including 3 out of our 4 of our presidential candidates (the 4th being Nader), the Iraqis aren't blind to history. They know full well how
the "Tet Offensive" spelled finis for
the U.S. occupation of Vietnam.
When they believe they're ready, the Iraqis
will lanuch their own Tet Offensive, turning the now placid U.S. public 100% against continued involvement in Iraq. The U.S. military will then have no choice but to evacuate,posthaste, leaving Iraq and its oil for the Iraqis!

"This week's testimony on Capitol Hill by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker once again made clear ..."

But what the testimony has made clear is that the testifiers who were chosen by the president support the president's position. The next presidnet will be able to get advice from other people. Let's just hope that those people aren't chosen to have their answers fit that presidnet's agenda.
Will that advice coincide with the present campaign promises? We don't know, and the candidates don't know.

About the Iraq war, bottom line is America is facing a severe economic crisis...we've only seen the TIP of the iceberg. We let a cowboy and his posse destroy Iraq, we have lost over 4,000 of our troops and killed almost a million Iraqis because of our delusions. We cannot afford Iraq - much as we feel for its people. The sky is falling on America - we have no choice but to leave Iraq. I don't know how they think Iran poses a problem - Israel is sitting over there with almost more uranium bombs than America has. Israel can't want to use them!!! We need to leave Iraq - and that some of the money we save to REALLY help our Iraq veterans hospitalized and whose lives have been altered and destroyed by their service in Iraq.

About the Iraq war, bottom line is America is facing a severe economic crisis...we've only seen the TIP of the iceberg. We let a cowboy and his posse destroy Iraq, we have lost over 4,000 of our troops and killed almost a million Iraqis because of our delusions. We cannot afford Iraq - much as we feel for its people. The sky is falling on America - we have no choice but to leave Iraq. I don't know how they think Iran poses a problem - Israel is sitting over there with almost more uranium bombs than America has. Israel can't want to use them!!! We need to leave Iraq - and that some of the money we save to REALLY help our Iraq veterans hospitalized and whose lives have been altered and destroyed by their service in Iraq.

Both Florida and Michigan both knew that their votes would not be counted when they voted early. Hillary pledged not to run in either state - but did. Now she wants the votes to count. The only fair way to deal with this now is to divide the delegates evenly between Clinton and Obama and get on with the real problems of America.

Both Florida and Michigan both knew that their votes would not be counted when they voted early. Hillary pledged not to run in either state - but did. Now she wants the votes to count. The only fair way to deal with this now is to divide the delegates evenly between Clinton and Obama and get on with the real problems of America.

Both Florida and Michigan both knew that their votes would not be counted when they voted early. Hillary pledged not to run in either state - but did. Now she wants the votes to count. The only fair way to deal with this now is to divide the delegates evenly between Clinton and Obama and get on with the real problems of America.

Both Florida and Michigan both knew that their votes would not be counted when they voted early. Hillary pledged not to run in either state - but did. Now she wants the votes to count. The only fair way to deal with this now is to divide the delegates evenly between Clinton and Obama and get on with the real problems of America.

Clintonesque logic? How about Stumped's logic? The word "invasion" ought to be substitutedr for "pullout" in Stumped's conclusion,vizl:

"If in the final analysis, the conclusion is that thing were better before the invasion, then the invasion--not the pullout-- will definitely mark the beginning of the end for America's leadership in the world."

In other words,if things were better for Iraq when Sudam was in power, i.e. under the dictator, then the invasion has certainly marked the beginning of the decline of America's leadership in the world.

And America ought not to pull out ever--or at the very least it doesn,t matter if it keeps its troops there for a hundred years, which is ineffect the same thing. However difficult, the decision on how and when to pull out will be left to Mr.Bush's successor when Mr. Bush retires to the ranch to practice his cowboy skills. His successor can avoid the decision if he is elected on the basis of never pulling out even partly, let alone completely.

Whatever, neither Iraq nor Iran nor any other Mideast nation seems to regard such American "leadership" "as desirable or "better" than its own. I believe originally even Mr.Bush, Cheney, Rumfield et al regarded an invasion and a pullout as virtually synonymous. Rather than scoffing at Mrs.Clinton's and Mr. Obama's logic, Stumped ought to examine theirs and his own.

Mccain wants to create the same senario in Iran.

Once you drop a bomb ...or desicCate a whole region and its people, Is there any easy way to clean up?

Gods do miracles ,politicians can't.

All we can do is get one who'll not repeat the mistakes that were for greed and power and do the best in a very bad, no win situation.

OBAMA wants to NEGOTIATE PEACE
MCCAIN wants to NEGOTIATE WAR.
HILLARY SIGNED ON TO WAR AND NOW FLIP FLOPS FOR THE VOTE

YOU WILL GET WHAT YOU ASK FOR.

VOTE.

Iraq is a dangerous and volatile place and will remain so for a long time regardless of whether or not our troops are stationed there. The current administration has made a series of mistakes based on the blind faith that democracy and a free market economy in Iraq will solve all problems. This has had the effect of limiting our options in the region to only the bad ones that we have today. Our administration's failed strategy of backing extremist sectarian groups in the national government while nominally encouraging an end to sectarian strife has not produced a clear path toward ending the instability of the region. Iran's policy of backing various Shia extremist groups has had the most success as their strategy and the resources backing it have proved to be the most coherent and complete.

While it is a fantasy to say that pulling our troops out of the region will put an end to the violence and encourage stability overnight. That combined with a far stronger diplomatic push has a far greater likelihood to promoting long term stability than any other plan. Reducing our footprint, while encouraging more active participation from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and the UAE (it's most in their national interests to see a stable, not sectarian Iraq) has a far greater chance of success than maintaining the status quo.

It is clear if you talk with our troops who are stationed in Iraq that despite the surge, they are overworked and understaffed. They don't see a long term reduction in violence from the current tactics, but rather a movement of the violence to less population dense areas where the surge hasn't had much of an impact. Maintaining the status quo is not a solution and will only increase the problems our military is beginning to suffer.

It is apparent that this administration and our country have made the decision not to increase our troop levels in the region enough to produce much clearer stability, in fact the time period in which that could have been effective has most likely passed. A clear change in strategy accompanied by a reduction in our troop levels is the only path forward. It is sure to be messy, but that region is already a mess unfortunately.

This is a great example of confusing a map with a territory. The boundaries of "Iraq" were artificially drawn by colonial military force a long time ago. It has always had 3 parts that we may call Sunnistan, Kurdistan and Shiastan. They could only be held together by a brutal dictatorship (like Saddam's.) So now we are holding "it" together by brutal force, paying the Sunnis not to shoot at us, while the Kurds make their own oil deals and we support one Shia faction in power against another. How does this make us responsible for "civil war," if we leave? During the Bush occupation fiasco much of Iraq was forcibly religiously cleansed. We should offer armed escort to Iraqi's wishing to relocate, emigrate, or return home and then get out!

Stumped?(where art thou?)....What would have happened if the US had done the preferred NOTHING after 9/11?

People are right when they say that a pull out would not work now.
The problem is that everyone is not thinking about the mistakes that we make in our lives. This includes our leaders they want us to believe that they never make a mistake.
As a normal adult when you make a stupid mistake. You get out of that situation and suffer the consequences.
Mistakes hurt that's life, our leaders are like used car salesmen.The majority of the people in the world know that the Iraq War is a mistake. So the time to pull out was on the way in.
We need to take care of our own people.

Let me add a few items I haven't noticed in Martinez' column or in other comments.

1. Did you know that Iraq had around a million Christians before our invasion? Many came from families that had been there for thousands of years. Most were middle class. Now the men have been mostly murdered by both Shiite and Sunni militias and the women and children driven into exile in Syria and Jordan, where they have no future.

This makes GOPers like Bush and Martinez the worst enemies of Christians on Earth today. Pretty ironic, huh?

2. Did you know that most of Iraq's middle class--Sunni, Shiite and Christian (and Turkomen and several other smaller groups) have also been driven out of Iraq and are refugees in Jordan and Syria? They're been driven out because the Islamofascists hate anyone with education (remember, Pol Pot's fanatics murdered Cambodia's middle class en masse as their first order of business).
The middle class has also been targeted by robbers and kidnappers.

3. Did you know that the Bush administration has told all the translators and other Iraqis who have worked for us "You're on you're own, pal." --even though all have been marked for death by the militias (Shiite and Sunni), along with their families.

Regardless of how well the war goes in Iraq, the Republican leadership has transformed that country permanently from a secular dictatorship into a quasidemocratic Islamist state that won't be safe for Christians and "collaborators" ever again, and not for its doctors and professors and other middle class people for many, many years.

Democrats and Republicans alike should recognize our moral responsibility to these 2-3 million Iraqis. If we took them in that would match two or three years' illegal immigration from Mexico and parts south--which we could staunch if we actually enforced existing laws on employers of illegals and enforced our borders.

Then instead of getting semiliterate peasants we'd get an educated workforce vastly more able to contribute to America and not just consuming social services while lining bosses' pockets.

We'd also get some Al Qaeda sleeper agents, probably. But no solution's perfect. And we'd at least do the honorable thing. Like the GOP keeps saying we should do, only they don't mention dealing with Iraq's refugee problem. That would be...well inconvenient. Next time some GOPer starts talking at you about Honor and Iraq--ask him what he proposes to do about the refugee crisis we created. Then you'll know whether he's actually honorable or just funnin' ya.

Even apart from the refugee issue--we all, Democrats and Republicans alike--have to face one fact: there is no simple, satisfactory solution in Iraq. To quote an old punk rock song:

Should we stay or should we go?
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da
Should we stay or should we go?
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da
If we go there will be trouble...
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da
If we stay there will double...
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da
All I really wanna know:
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da
Should we stay or should we go?

At every crossroads our Republican administration made the one choice that would make it as hard for us as possible in the future--and help Iran as much as possible in the present.

First we took out the major check to Iranian power. Then we ensured that it would have the same relationship to Iran that Lebanon has to Syria. Then we tied up all our military resources in Iraq (with a tad left over for the country that the attack on America actually came from), so if Iraq actually does something we couldn't do anything but drop bombs on them.

Wouldn't it be funny if it turned out Bush were actually an Iranian mole?

The New World Order that George Herbert Walker Bush spoke of prevents a US withdrawal from the occupation of Iraq.

Maliki and Bush have signed agreements that prevent a permanent military presence but recent agreements pave the way for about 50,000 American troops to stay permanently in Iraq while military bases are handed over to the host nation in the same way as Saudi bases. Such 'cooperation' scenarios have taken place before. In 1991, the US military was expelled from the Philippines, but, by building bases 'for' the country, extended its stay indefinitely.

Another problem for Bush is when the trucks are packed ready to leave, Iran will forge even greater ties with Iraq based on trust and mutual interests of a neighboring country. This will include the transfer of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Only the people of America can force a complete withdrawal by insisting that no more funds are allocated to Iraq.

George H W Bush should give up reading his CIA reports and concentrate on retirement.

Your remark regarding Kafkaesque or Clintonesque logic made my day..."Pledged delegates are really, really pledged in all states she won(including the illegitimate contests) but delegates from states she lost are free agents". Senator Clinton's endless scheming regarding the delegate count is so transparent and has really worn thin...what you said sums it up very clearly..thanks for a priceless ray of humor in this weary race.

Pledged delegates in FL and MI could switch to Obama, if they wanted to... but he tried to muscle (muzzle?) them out of the primaries. Obama ran ads on cable in FL, but his supporters didn't vote. They aren't the Democratic loyalists who care about local issues. Obama took his name off the ballot in MI and urged his supporters to vote undecided hoping he could claim those later if the other candidates dropped out. Obama made a deal with Richardson in IA, while Biden said, "No thanks." Obama has been gaming the system, and he runs the same campaign he did in every IL election. All his Hope and Change is just more words.

Carl from Caracus, which is in Venezuela, not with "El Comandante" in Bolivia.

Iraq is at civil war w /wo
USA presence. A significant majority of Iraqis of all religious persuasions state USA military presence is part of the problem not the solution.

In explaining why he didn't finish off Hussein, Bush's dad stated, "To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day hero ... assigning young soldiers ... into what would be an un-winnable urban guerilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability."

Read the book: "The Peace to End All Peace", on how after WWI the Middle East was divided up by the European powers. The title speaks for itself, and the irony is that at that time it was the US which advocated leaving the area alone and allow the region to work it out for themselves.

There is a presupposition regarding withdrawal from Iraq (for example, in the question starting Democrats' Iraq Fantasies) that the US should be responsible for preventing a civil war in Iraq and that we should not withdraw until it can be ensured that a civil war will not occur. I would like to see a reasonable argument for this proposition.

If at any time the Iraqis engage in civil war (as they seem to be now), that clearly is their responsibility rather than ours. Why should it be our duty to prevent instability that they themselves foment? Are we responsible for everything that happens in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam? Why should that be?

There is an easy way to remove troops from Iraq. Announce a date certain when we will be out and start moving the troops before that date. Many will say that there will be chaos and civil war when we leave. That is the risk we take. Life is not without risk. Notably the risk does not involve American life and money.

General Petreaus implied that Iraq and the middle east are of world importance. However the rest of the world either does not believe so or is unwilling to pay the cost of the war. Why should ordinary Americans pay the cost when the rest of the world is unwilling to do so?. If the Iraq war was of such strategic importance, (1)the president would have raised taxes to pay for the war, and (2) the rest of the developed world would willingly share the burden. Accordingly Iraq can not be of strategic importance to the world.

With regard to our health care system, it stinks. McCain, a navy pilot, whose father and grandfather were in the military, has never had to pay for medical care which was always provided him,his parents and his children by the Federal Government. Yet, he would not give this same benefit to ordinary citizens who work equally as hard and will argue that the Federal Government is incapable of handling it. One must be terribly misguided to prefer spending money tearing things down in war rather than building things up so people can live better.

How can a policy based on invasion, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the displacement of millions, and the destruction of the uniformed services of the USA, be maintained let alone defended?

The convenient appellations 'bad guys', 'terrorists', have served us well in the shifting sands of The Middle East. These patriotic "Sons of Iraq" that we are now paying $300 a month were the Sunnis who have been the most responsible for the first 3500+ American dead. Now they are the good guys and there are some other bad guys.

Someone must hve finally gotten a map of the region and realized that the Shia, although a majority in Iraq, are a minority in the region.
We've still got that pesky majority however, and the irritating recent history of our handing the country over to them.

I'm starting to smell a final solution and I think, given that there are 2.5 million Shia in Sadr City, that it should be spelled with capital letters, but I hesitate to offend. There are also a few million Shia in Iran to be shocked and awed and sung to by McCain.

Then the Sunnis throughout the region will be happy, including the bin Laden family.

Will the US get away with it? A British analysis has the number of Iraqi civilians killed at one million 2 hundred thousand, and it isnt even reported in the American media. They spend thousands of hours shocked that Rev Wright can say " God Damn America", but CNN, CBS, MSNBC,FOX, ABC, etc, cant find a minute or 2 in 5 years to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens who have been killed since our invasion.
I am sure all the networks are working on their graphics even now for the Iranian invasion. They've already got that catchy little tune.

It is funny to me to say that the Democrats have a "fantasy" of the Iraq situation while the President and the Republican party has continually ignored what is happening in Iraq. So in my opinion everyone is dillusional at this point. There needs to be change because apparently the US being in Iraq is not doing anything but having our troops killed and having out economy go down the sprial to the bottom of the gutter. This I am sorry to change will not change in the future. Our presence in Iraq is not needed or welcomed. It is time to do something instead of just talking about doing something.

You guys and girls still carry the McCain century remark forward as an insult. Well, it insults my intelligence to see it thrown out in sarcasm. Anyone with a brain knows what the Senator means, and he means that, if elected, America's word is good. I do not see the other lesser candidates standing up for principle at all, only ducking imaginary sniper fire and defending Jim Crow racism.

You'll get the government you deserve, as usual, but is that good for the balance of the world?

I live in Canada, incidentally, and love watching the Democratic three ring circus.

You guys and girls still carry the McCain century remark forward as an insult. Well, it insults my intelligence to see it thrown out in sarcasm. Anyone with a brain knows what the Senator means, and he means that, if elected, America's word is good. I do not see the other lesser candidates standing up for principle at all, only ducking imaginary sniper fire and defending Jim Crow racism.

You'll get the government you deserve, as usual, but is that good for the balance of the world?

I live in Canada, incidentally, and love watching the Democratic three ring circus.

Are by any chance biased. Of course not - I am just "stumped".

Obviously Andres Martinez has no credibility. 'Nuff said.

Dear Stumped

Just how would it be logistically possible to withdraw US troops from Iraq at any kind of a rapid pace?

Well, there's one way for that scenario to come about, namely, if-more likely WHEN-the Iraqis themselves reach the same point the Vietnamese did when they decided to end the US military and political presence in Vietnam, which, in Iraq's case, will result in a replay of Vietnam all over again, IE, helicopters evacuating US personnel off Green Zone roofs.

There's not a level of Hell deep, miserable or permanent enough for all those who engineered and implemented the Iraq invasion and catastrophic-to-US-interests occupation.

Oh yeah, I second Losthorizon101's comment @ April 11, 2008 1:55 AM

Our presence aggravates the situation. Reconciliation in Iraq will only come when they see we are leaving. Iraq's neighbors will then feel the pressure to be part of the solution. Otherwise, its just non-stop insurgency/civil war far into the future.

Dear Stumped:

Andres, what qualifications do you have to conclude that America's entanglement with Iraq is not deeply damaging our future prospects as a nation, and that any effort to leave would be catastrophic?

Your claims, given your status as a "reporter" for the Washington Post) not exactly a refuge for much in the way of intelligent thought) seem especially ignorant given the rise of China, EU's more well-documented, progressive stances on military intervention and trade, and our looming - and historically unprecedented - debt crisis.

Do they give out a special Condescension certificate to Post journalists, or do you actually have a Super Secret 9th-degree PhD in economics and international policy that makes you smarter than most of the real experts in the field? Because you're alone in your analysis.

Hillary Clinton to the Barack Obama: "What's mine is mine, what's yours is negotiable."

Wow, what a blatant lie:

"...the two Democratic presidential candidates have now embraced campaign-driven (i.e., fantasyland-based) tidy exit timetables."

What timetables? By what date have they committed to getting the troops out? Can you name the time-table? Of course not -- it's a fantasy.

Neither Dem has committed to getting all the troops out by the end of their first term, and both have plans that leave as many as 80,000 "residual troops" in Iraq.

The WaPo is really a joke.

Dear Stumped,

Why is it "fantasy" to recognize that the US has neither the resources nor the political will to support an open-ended occupation of a major Middle Eastern country? Is that any more "faith based" than McCain's argument that we can and should stay in Iraq until peace prevails -- and then stay for another 100 years after that??

What exactly do they put in the Washington DC water supply that produces such extreme myopia in corporate-controlled journalists?

To "Carl from Caracas": if you think the US must invade Iraq and stay there foreever, or else cease to be a world leader, presumably you itch for Uncle Sam to light up Caracas with a little "snock and awe" and liberate Venezuelans the way we did Iraq or, 100 years earlier, Cuba. We stayed in Cuba quite a while, without a fraction of the trouble, except for the failure to institute graft-free rule, but where did that get the US or Cuba? Can you imagine the AD or COPEI trying to rule Venezuela under a US protectorate? Would Venezuelan police or soldiers shoot at tattered chavistas who refuse to surrender their arms and return to "their place"? How about if the US withdrew Venezuela from OPEC, abolished PdVSA, and sold oil to the US at lower prices?

What would future Venezuelan history books say about the "Carl of Caracas" who, being unable to oust Hugo via the polls, instead relied on the USA? Would there be any great popular praise of American Leadership?

Now ask whether you think occupying Iraq will be a picnic or yield anything for the occupier or the occupied?

Perhaps the world would be better off if leadership were measured by things other than brash and ill-considered military conquests. There are smarter ways to promote security and prosperity.

Bottom line: What do we care about in Iraq, enough to continue pouring billions of dollars and the better part of our military's ground combat power into the country indefinitely?

Violence among Iraqis, sectarian or otherwise? Iraqi oil, which will flow into a global market eventually regardless of what happens in Iraq now? Regional instability, a catch-all phrase suggesting all the things that might make people in the region nervous? The message discipline of the current administration, which has sounded the same themes about democracy and freedom in Iraq for over five years now?

Americans have little reason to care very much about any of these things. The one thing that really matters to this country is that al Qaeda, and groups that think and act like al Qaeda, not be able to use Iraq as a base for terrorism against us or our friends. That's it.

With the Sunni Arab community preoccupied with how to defend itself from Iraqi Shias backed by Iran, it ought to be possible to prevent this without leaving the American army in Iraq for years and years. As far as the other things are concerned, we ought to be clear -- as Democratic candidates for President never have been -- that things in Iraq could get a lot worse once the American army leaves. It isn't certain this will happen; it might not, and it would be a very good thing if it did not.

But there is an element of savagery inherent in Arab culture, and particularly the culture of Arab Iraq, that has been manifested not only in the violence of the last several years but also in the record of the former Baathist government. The Army and Marines cannot change that, and the United States simply cannot afford to leave our forces in Iraq forever for fear that some terrible disaster that might make us look bad will burst anew upon that country once we leave.

American withdrawal from Iraq is not a matter of securing a better future for Iraqis. It isn't a matter of finding a "smarter" way to a good outcome in that country. It is instead about recognizing a failure for what it is, redirecting American resources to the pursuit of more important American interests, and repairing the damage this adventure has done to the American military and government as well as to our relations with other countries. American withdrawal from Iraq is simply and solely about cutting our losses.

That is never an easy thing to do, in public affairs any more than in private life -- but it is part of life, and it is long past time we stopped pretending that cutting our losses in Iraq is something we can put off forever.

We do need to get Iraq in shape where we can move all our american jobs from China over to Iraq and build our economy back up so we ca invade Iran.

Unfortunately the United States though the blundering leadership of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld have opened Pandora's box in Iraq. Pulling out is not the best strategy because as Colin Powell observed, you break it, you own it. And we broke it and we most certainly own it.

That said, Bush and company are just happy to keep blundering. There appears no real understanding of what we have gotten into and very little thought for how to get out of this mess.

The United States needs to rethink the situation and instead of using brute force which is not working, find a better solution that benefits the Iraqi people and not the no-bid contractors who have made billions of dollars from this war and who have precious little to show for their efforts.

The money that is being squandered by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney on these multi-national contractors such as Blackwater, Haliburton, Bectel and the rest, should be given to the Iraqi people as support to actually do something tangible. Then when what we broke has been fixed, perhaps we can get our troops out of Iraq and concentrate them where they need to be concentrated.

This issue is not about the Democrats or the Republicans. It is not political. It is all about big money in the wrong hands. The only thing political about this mess is congress lacks the integrity or the fortitude to insist on the right thing being done.

All that has been said is correct. SO just get out and let Iraq handle it!

"There is no way a Democrat President wants to be blamed for the chaos, deaths, starvation and the humanitarian crisis that would occur should the US pull out of Iraq."

The blame will lay fully with the guy in office now, the one who has horrendously misallocated our precious security resources and empowered Iran with a fraudulent 'invasion' based on no valid intell.

But the blame is secondary to a responsible and intelligent withdrawal plan, one that actually includes a project management plan that puts enough burden on the Iraqi government to start running their own country. Their burden will be probably be lessened by our not being a target there.

Dear Stumped
Why are you such a GOP parrot and hack?

Unless you can read the future you have no idea what will happen when we pull out. Like Crocker and Petraeus, you refuse to speculate on "hypotheticals", except when someone mentions pulling out and then somehow you know exactly what will happen in that "hypothetical."

You are shameless GOP propagandaist.

A better press please. This one is stupid and corrupt.

Stumped is being objective and honest. The only way for the US to get out of Iraq in the near future is if someone invents a time machine (change Bush's mind, somehow Gore wins recount or convince Bush 41 to finish the job in the first Gulf War).

However, the reality is that the US will be in Iraq for a long time, no matter who gets elected. Obama and Hillary know this but they are just playing to the left to win the nomination. It might be fun to see a Democrat win and watch the left turn on them after the new President admits that we must stay in Iraq.

There are no easy or quick fixes. There is no way a Democrat President wants to be blamed for the chaos, deaths, starvation and the humanitarian crisis that would occur should the US pull out of Iraq. A Democrat might draw down the troops to 50,000 in Iraq and place the other 50,000 in Kuwait and try to claim that he or she kept their campaign promise but the reality is that the US is staying in Iraq.

So everybody is wrong on Iraq, but what is the right thing to do? We shouldn't stay forever. We don't know when to get out. We should not even get out according to a plan. Give us a clue.

Look, the reason we should get out now is because we are not doing any good. The result will be the same whenever we get out, just as in Viet Nam. We are not solving any of the serious geopolitical problems such as Shia v. Sunni, Kurdish expansionism, the disapearence of 2 million Christians, the fight between Badr, Mahdi and Fadhila, etc., etc., etc. We are not helping the economic problems such as jobs, smuggling of oil, electricity, drinking water, corruption, etc., etc., etc.

Historians who study civil strife such as Miranda Toft at Harvard point out that these struggles rarely end until a great many people are killed. 200,000 died in Bosnia which is equivalent to 3,000,000 in Iraq. Look at the 30 Years War, our Civil War, Bosnia , Lebanon, etc., etc., etc.

We should get out now. If a miracle happens, and they get together, fine. If they kill themselves, when they have had enough, the UN or NATO can move in and pick up the pieces. The metaphor for Iraq is not the Pottery Barn. It is Humpty Dumpy.

What is clear to me after reading your column is that Abraham Lincoln was right when he said "You can fool some of the people all of the time...". It was bitterly amusing to hear Bush describe our presence in Iraq as being something that the government of Iraq requested... like the puppet Poland government "requested" the presence of Germany in 1939... Or in Hungary in 1956 when the Hungarian quisling János Kádár "requested" the Russian intervention to crush the free expression of a people suffering a brutal foreign oppression. Bush and McCain have the same exit strategy from Iraq as Stalin did from Hungary: brutally crushing any attempt at resistance to the occupation. At first I was stumped about the pronunciation of your moniker, I assumed it was pronounced stumt. Now I understand that the correct pronunciation is STOOM-pid.

China, Russia, the United States, Britain, and many other countries have all had civil wars at one time or another, so why shouldn't Iraq have one if they need it? It's their country after all, a fact we conveniently forgot when we invaded.

Health Care Horror Stories
New York Times

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: April 11, 2008
Not long ago, a young Ohio woman named Trina Bachtel, who was having health problems while pregnant, tried to get help at a local clinic.

Paul Krugman
Go to Columnist Page »
Blog: The Conscience of a Liberal
Unfortunately, she had previously sought care at the same clinic while uninsured and had a large unpaid balance. The clinic wouldn't see her again unless she paid $100 per visit -- which she didn't have.

Eventually, she sought care at a hospital 30 miles away. By then, however, it was too late. Both she and the baby died.

You may think that this was an extreme case, but stories like this are common in America.

Back in 2006, The Wall Street Journal told another such story: that of a young woman named Monique White, who failed to get regular care for lupus because she lacked insurance. Then, one night, "as skin lesions spread over her body and her stomach swelled, she couldn't sleep."

The Journal's report goes on: "Mama, please help me! Please take me to the E.R.," she howled, according to her mother, Gail Deal. "O.K., let's go," Mrs. Deal recalls saying. "No, I can't," the daughter replied. "I don't have insurance."

She was rushed to the hospital the next day after suffering a seizure -- and the hospital spared no expense on her treatment. But it all came too late; she was dead a few months later.

How can such things happen? "I mean, people have access to health care in America," President Bush once declared. "After all, you just go to an emergency room." Not quite.

First of all, visits to the emergency room are no substitute for regular care, which can identify and treat health problems before they get acute. And more than 40 percent of uninsured adults have no regular source of care.

Second, uninsured Americans often postpone medical care, even when they know they need it, because of expense.

Finally, while it's true that hospitals will treat anyone who arrives in an emergency room with an acute problem -- and it's wonderful that they will -- it's also true that hospitals bill patients for emergency-room treatment. And fear of those bills often causes uninsured Americans to hesitate before seeking medical help, even in emergencies, as the Monique White story illustrates.

The end result is that the uninsured receive a lot less care than the insured. And sometimes this lack of care kills them. According to a recent estimate by the Urban Institute, the lack of health insurance leads to 27,000 preventable deaths in America each year.

But are they really preventable? Yes. Stories like those of Trina Bachtel and Monique White are common in America, but don't happen in any other rich country -- because every other advanced nation has some form of universal health insurance. We should, too.

All of which makes the media circus of a few days ago truly shameful.

Some readers may already have recognized the story of Trina Bachtel. While campaigning in Ohio, Hillary Clinton was told this story, and she took to repeating it, without naming the victim, on the campaign trail. She used it as an illustration of what's wrong with American health care and why we need universal coverage.

Then The Washington Post identified Ms. Bachtel, the hospital where she died claimed that the story was false -- and the news media went to town, accusing Mrs. Clinton of making stuff up. Instead of being a story about health care, it became a story about the candidate's supposed problems with the truth.

In fact, Mrs. Clinton was accurately repeating the story as it was told to her -- and it turns out that while some of the details were slightly off, the essentials of her story were correct. After all the fuss, The Washington Post eventually conceded that "Bachtel's medical tragedy began with circumstances very close to the essence" of Mrs. Clinton's account.

And even more important, Mrs. Clinton was making a valid point about the state of health care in this country.

In other words, this was a disgraceful episode. It was particularly sad to see a number of Obama supporters (though not the Obama campaign itself) join enthusiastically in the catcalls against Mrs. Clinton's good-faith effort to put a human face on the cruelty and injustice of the American health care system.

Look, I know that many progressives have their hearts set on seeing Barack Obama get the Democratic nomination. But politics is supposed to be about more than cheering your team and jeering the other side. It's supposed to be about changing the country for the better.

And if being a progressive means anything, it means believing that we need universal health care, so that terrible stories like those of Monique White, Trina Bachtel and the thousands of other Americans who die each year from lack of insurance become a thing of the past.

Fantasy? Like being greeted with flowers fantasy? Like creating a US style democracy fanatasy? Like mission accomplished fantasy? Like the surge is working fantasy? You right wing Bush apologists are all living in fanatasy.

PLEASE BE HONEST ABOUT WHAT THIS COLUMN IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT.

It brings shame to this paper as long as it is allowed to purport to be simply reasonable advice, and not clearly labeled as right-wing opinion.

Losthorizon101,

I'll answer your question as to who writes this despicable trash. It's written by one of the seemingly endless numbers of right-wing Washington Post pundits who do little other than spout Republican talking points. They know that their paper is trash, and that they themselves are profoundly dishonest people who repeatedly write in bad faith. Did you notice how Martinez heaped contempt on Clinton for stating we would get out regardless of "developments" but then carefully declined to name a single "development" that should keep our troops in harm's way?

Martinez knows that the intent all along was to conquer and brutally occupy Iraq, and he knows that Iraq was not and is not a threat to the U.S. The Post hired him to help create a huge smoke screen so that a few Americans would hopefully not figure this out.

Awful. Just awful.

I wouldn't be so quick to denigrate Paul Kennedy's premise on the possibility of the decline of the US as a world power. The analogy to our recovery after Vietnam forgets that we still had a manufacturing economic base which we don't have now.
In addition, no where do you confront the cost of Iraq which is spiraling us down to the point where we literally cannot financially support the forever occupation of Iraq.

Remember how Vietnam was going to crumble once we left and set off a domino chain leading to Soviet world domination?

No? I got the sense you didn't.

But Iraq is, like, totally going down the tubes without us. Thanks for the coherence of your professional thought. ;)

Tool.

Dear Stumped,

Okay, I admit it. I am stumped. Could you please explain how a right-leaning pundit who gives political responses to political questions, and masquerades them as "fact" in a "stumped" column, got a job reading and responding publicly to email at the left-leaning Washington Post?

David
Pennsylvania

I know much of this column is "serious humor", but I think you sell the Obama plan short: there comes a time when the best way you can help a country is to let it stand on its own, with the understanding that you are there to support it if things go seriously wrong. Since we all accept that we are in a situation nobody knows how to get out of, a plan like his seems a better one than either pulling out unilaterally, or staying put and hoping that doing the same thing will somehow start producing better results.

A plan like the Obama one, maybe also including no-fly zones and other policies to prevent overt mucking about by Iraq's neighbors (something we seem unable to prevent Turkey from doing right now), could be exactly what is needed to prevent the extremists from using us as a recruiting tool and target, and cause them to have to think about the "post-American" Iraqi situation.

There are other advantages to a plan like Obama's (and mind you I'm now talking about a hypothetical plan, rather than *his* plan), such as how it would really require the sort of 3-party talks with Iran that Crocker (I believe) was just saying we may need to have. If we force non-intervention guarantees from Iran as a precondition for our pulling out (and from the Turks and Saudis and Syrians, while we're at it), we can use those agreements against them if they are proven to be violating them. The NSE mentioned how international public opinion was actually an effective tool to effect their actions.

What is more, even if Obama's plan is only what you joke it is - pulling out now so we can go back later - it is *still* not all bad: if we have to go back in to restore stability Bosnia-style, we will be one much more firm international footing, just as we were in Bosnia. International opinion is still with us in Afghanistan - there is a reason for this, and it's really not because we are winning.

I know much of this column is "serious humor", but I think you sell the Obama plan short: there comes a time when the best way you can help a country is to let it stand on its own, with the understanding that you are there to support it if things go seriously wrong. Since we all accept that we are in a situation nobody knows how to get out of, a plan like his seems a better one than either pulling out unilaterally, or staying put and hoping that doing the same thing will somehow start producing better results.

A plan like the Obama one, maybe also including no-fly zones and other policies to prevent overt mucking about by Iraq's neighbors (something we seem unable to prevent Turkey from doing right now), could be exactly what is needed to prevent the extremists from using us as a recruiting tool and target, and cause them to have to think about the "post-American" Iraqi situation.

There are other advantages to a plan like Obama's (and mind you I'm now talking about a hypothetical plan, rather than *his* plan), such as how it would really require the sort of 3-party talks with Iran that Crocker (I believe) was just saying we may need to have. If we force non-intervention guarantees from Iran as a precondition for our pulling out (and from the Turks and Saudis and Syrians, while we're at it), we can use those agreements against them if they are proven to be violating them. The NSE mentioned how international public opinion was actually an effective tool to effect their actions.

What is more, even if Obama's plan is only what you joke it is - pulling out now so we can go back later - it is *still* not all bad: if we have to go back in to restore stability Bosnia-style, we will be one much more firm international footing, just as we were in Bosnia. International opinion is still with us in Afghanistan - there is a reason for this, and it's really not because we are winning.

For one quick to point out the Kafkaesque logic of others,you should look at your own once in a while. You see all sorts of real and imaginary peril in trying to disengage ourselves from the infernal mess in Iraq. Did you see any peril at all in getting in? Only if you had warned of Republican follies in 2003 would you have earned the right to caution us against the risks of getting out.

So the only way to prevent Iraq from going into complete chaos is following the policy of the administration that messed it up in the first place? And you say the Democrats are in fantasy land.

Our military just doesn't have the tools to change a peoples who don't want to be changed. The only reason their corrupt leaders listen to us is to get money. They have their own lives, culture, and plans. You can't expect them to change, they aren't children.

Right now the GOP knows where Iraq is headed and they are just positioning themselves to blame Dems once we get out of Iraq.

Who writes this despicable garbage? Our troops are dying and being horribly wounded by IED's in Iraq while chickenhawks, neocons, and gutless WaPo journalists spout off with GOP lame-brained talking points. You people should all crawl into a hole and beg forgiveness of our dead and wounded, you sick jackals with your tiny black hearts.

Al Qaeda's biggest recruiting tool is our presence in Iraq. Once we leave this phony, useless, made-up war, they will have to leave or get wiped out by the Shiites, and the Sunnis.

We spend more in three weeks in Iraq that we have in SIX YEARS in Afghanistan, where bin Laden is still free. Where does this dishonorable WaPo hack get off writing this trash?

We didn't give a whole lot of thought about the effect upon the Iraqui people when we went into Iraq. The administration claimed they did, but obviously they didn't. So why all the gutwrenching about what happens when we leave? We can't control that, either. So just call in a lot of planes, ships and trucks, and pack up and leave. Let the Iraquis sort it out, since that's what has to happen, anyway, in the end. But quit spending a gazillion dollars a week on a stupid venture we should never have embarked upon, while the US goes down the tubes.