You mean there is not a current Civil War in Iraq? The high body count every day in Baghdad is exhibit #1 that a active Civil War is indeed in progress in Iraq, and that the American presence there is only keeping a not too tight lid on it.

We are dealing with 2 groups of people (3 if you include the Kurds) who have more or less been at war with each other in that region for over a thousand year. Such a history of deep hatred does not end over night, or during a decade of foreign occupation. If a foreign occupation could end the civil strife in Iraq, then the British would have been successful in their decade long attempt to do just that after World War 1.

Armed Sunnis who are loyal to the US occupation, will just wait for the US to leave, and then they will take up arms more actively against the Shiites that they hate with a passion. The hatred between the Sunnis and the Shiites has lasted for centuries of generations, it has been exasperated further by the de-bathification/Iraqi army disbandment policies of the Bush Administration, and it will last for many more generations to come.

Let me get this straight. We de-Baath'ed the Sunni groups in Iraq because Sadaam was bad. We were not supposed to notice that Osama was Sunni, right?

Now the Iranians are bad. Or is it al Quaeda? Or maybe another terrorist? All I know is it is not anyone from Israel, unless Jesus returned. Cavaet: That is not true if the rapture occurred, of course I along with my heathen friends missed it.

Maybe I should watch FOX to keep up with this. I need to know who to hate. As it is I am so confused!

Even the mass media has failed to teach me who I should hate. Sigh. This spreading democracy stuff is SOOOOOO confusing.

Where is Britney, anyway?

Make that that Osama was NOT Sunni.

Propaganda is that which is not told/

Is sometime worse than what we are sold.

On August 19, 2007 seven non-commissioned officers wrote an OP-ED that appeared in the NY Times titled "The War as We Saw It". As members of the 82nd Airborne Division they were coming to the end of their 15-month tour. They wrote:

"To believe that Americans, with an occupying force

that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win

over a recalcitrant local population and win this

counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible

infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the

82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home,

we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying

the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel

it has neglected the mounting civil, political, and

social unrest we see every day."

And continuing:

"...while creating proxies is essential to winning a

counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are

loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed

Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates,

but the enduring question is where their loyalties

would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds

itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue

because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias

will turn on it should the Americans leave."

So Mark Benjamin has men in arms who agree with him.

And while a "Dog and Pony Show" in the Green Zone

may captivate and convince men like Senator Lindsay

Graham, troops on patrol at night think otherwise.

After 5 years of dicking around at the top levels of operational planning, trying to screw up a military occupation by every means known to history, we've now settled on more or less the exact formula the British used -- a formula that led more or less directly to the rise of totalitarianism in Iraq following their withdrawal.

This is idiocy.

So, any of you bright sparks out there got a BETTER idea? That is to say, a workable plan, which won't result in a massive bloodbath when we leave, and won't hand Iraq over to the nutcase in Iran to become part of the new Greater Mesopotamian Islamic Republic of Iran & Iraq. That, of course, would seriously tweak the Saudi noses to no end - they being Wahabi Sunnis and all. I can just imagine 50,000 or so Revolutionary Guards and Quds Forces being invited into Iraq to help the Shiite government put down the insurgents in the vacuum we leave behind. And you think we've got problems now? That would be an IMMENSE problem.

Who'da thought it could have been so simple all along! Damn that Dubya, he sure knows how to pull a surprise out of his ass. God, what a statesman! When all else fails, simply say it doesn't work like that, it works like this! I feel so silly!

Seriously - this is the last desperate act of a fool who has steered the ship of two states out so far into the hurricane that while the larger one (ours) may only get roughed up (I know I'm sick awready), the other one is going to simply implode. Well I guess it would have to anyway. There is no clean way out of a bank robbery except to start hollering "Attica! Attica!" or something similarly meaningless.

So it all goes down in flames. It was going to anyway once we removed the western-installed idiot S. Hussein. We giveth and we taketh away. Why does anyone even care at this point? Just, for god's sake, leave us waste no more young American lives on this moronic project.

According to you we (America) should keep a force in Mesopotamia till the end time, because to prevent the bloodbath, in the way that you are insinuating, that's what we would have to do.

BTW, are you willing to stay there for at least 20 of those years that you are suggesting we stay to prevent the inevitable bloodbath that you are talking about?

I'm sure just about every American soldier over there in Iraq right now would love to have you take their place, especially the ones that have been there for over a year and had their tours extended to 15 months.

Did you stop to think that there might be a better way to stop the bloodshed in Mesopotamia without having to keep a large, 9 Billion dollar a week, military breaking, contingent of US troops permanently station over there?

Obviously Dubya didn't, so I guess you to decided to follow his lead.

There are other options, such as partitioning Iraq along ethnic lines and working with all of Iraq's neighbors to hammer out a lasting fair territorial arrangement that the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds can all agree to (such a plan worked in the Balkans), but you and the Neo-cons are stuck on staying the blood stained course in Iraq, and just moving the goal post to new, unachievable, benchmarks each and every month till the end of time.

I, and 2 thirds of American voters, are tired of paying the 9 Billion dollars a week just to watch our troops die, while the situation in Iraq just gets worse.