National pride! Is that what Iraq is all about to you? 3000+ American kids dead, untold thousands of Iraqis, and you're worried about your national pride!? You're a sick fuck. -- jvoelzow

(Sigh)I can have pride in my nation, but not national pride. No, I'm talking about the nation in general refusing to surrender. The "reality based" group here, including Glenn are having a hard time dealing with that idea.

The reality is that one can poll till the cows come home, but the only poll that matters is the one where individual Congressmen put their fingers in the air to see which way the wind is blowing.

Currently, that wind blows toward maintaining the "peace" in Iraq. Yes, I know that Bush polls low, and yes, the war polls badly, and yes people want to be out of Iraq... but obviously the Congresspersons don't believe those polls enough to risk career suicide.

Here's a gift for you people... There is no way you can squeeze the military money pipeline and simultaneously say that won't affect the troops. It's like saying we're going to cut off the Army oxygen, but it won't affect the troop's breathing. It's simply not believable.

OTOH this isn't the dumbest thing about Iraq. As I mentioned before, if the Muslims could just get the self control, not to blow each other up for a couple months, we'd be out of there. But no, they are just not the capable.

Say, what are the chances you guys could quit calling Bush a moron, and call the feuding sects morons, instead of egging on the fighting? You know, blame the bombers for a change?

Nah, it's too easy.

First, if defunding doesn't actually stop the money flow, then why does congress even bother going through the process and where does the actually money come from? And second, how then is voting to defund even a good means to end the occupation? Thanks. -- Daniel_28

Daniel 28 you have actually just proved to be the best and brightest of the bunch. It is not logical to try and stop the war by cutting off funds, and then turn around and say cutting off funds won't affect the troops fighting the war.

As Schumer might say, even a child of two can see the flaw in that logic. But liberals here like to build flights of fancy and then call them real, right up until the time they collapse from their own weightlessness.

This intellectual confoundment is the ultimate result of trying to weasel out of an unpopular political position. At the beginning of the war, denigrating the invasion and celebrating casualties was seen as unpatriotic. Treasonous even. So the left had to come up with spin to deflect that sentiment, and thus "we support the troops not the war" was born.

The left, being the left, also decided that the internal logical conflict of that slogan didn't matter, because it sounded good and "reframed" the issue. But as usual, inanity has to be explained at some point. How does one support people who voluntarily choose to wage war (be soldiers), while simultaneously denouncing the war they wage? How do the American people reconcile that "support" when any and all opportunities such as Abu Ghraib result in denouncing the troops?

It is apparent to one and all that the left DOES NOT support the troops and could hardly care less if cutting funding leaves them without bullets in the middle of a fight. As usual, it isn't Republicans that cause the problem, it's the disconnect between what the left says and what it does that is your downfall. You can fool yourselves, but the rest of the country sees it for the foolishness it is.

I understand that you folks are bored and need an adrenaline boost, but I'm sorry to say that we won't be invading Iran any time soon. We might bomb it a little bit, but nothing major like Bosnia.

As for staying, how about that sterling example we have in South Korea? It's kept the totalitarians at bay and in the meantime SK has become a formidable economic power. We've been there over fifty years I believe and it's worked out very well. Give occupation a chance.

P.S. I notice that all the arguments about invading don't seem to apply to Afghanistan. Why is that?

As I have often said....

* We should pull all troops from everywhere

* Pay off our debts

* Enjoy the love of a world, that appreciates our willingness to let it find it's own way, while we remain neutral. It is indeed, the best of all possible worlds.

what he's doing here is not just saying, "They have no right to be angry because of all the wonderful things we've done for them. Nor is he just delivering the subtext, "They have no right to be angry because we're civilized and they're not." He's going even further than that. He's saying, "They have no right to feel anything, except for what we approve, and therefore we won't even bother listening to them. For all practical purposes, they do not exist. They only exist to support our theories." This is not just morally repugnant as the same sort of thinking that underlies genocide. --Paul Rosenberg

LOL. While you're at it, why not have Blair "say" he was the second gunman on the grassy knoll? There's no conversation required when you're going to fabricate someone's thoughts and present them as representative. When did you start making up stuff? I thought you were smarter than that.

Pull all the troops from everywhere.

* We don't kill anyone, noone kills us
* We save enough money to pay off all debt and fund social security
* The world loves us for minding our own business.

It's the best of all possible worlds, yet I don't hear anyone jumping on the bandwagon. That tells me all this posturing about the hubris of Americans is phoney. I'm not surprised.