I was watching office space tonight, and I noticed the scene in which Peter is talking to Bob & Bob features a white board in the background titled "Planning to plan" with a nasty flowchart. Too funny.

But back to reality, there is planning and then there is leadership. Unfortunately, I see no leadership from either side of the aisle. At least Murtha outlines a problem and proposes a solution to that specific problem, which is better than what everybody else has to say about the issue at hand.

everyone is trying to figure a way out of iraq but one guy-the president. that's because he has no plan to get out but rather has plans to stay in with large bases for the foreseeable future. 10-20 years minimum. why doesn't anyone confront the real plan, i.e., to maintain a force in iraq so as to influence the government , it's oil policies and the remaining countries in the region with our forces. if that's not a plan to maintain hostilities between us and arabs i don't know what is. of course this coincides nicely with the president's religous beliefs which require us to support israel no matter the reason or the cost. when we can confront the reality of that plan then we'll begin to have a real debate.

What makes you think the Sunnis will go along with that

plan? They are fighting for their existance. After decades

of abuse at the hands of the Sunnis do you think the Kurds

and the Shi'ites are going to let them off the hook?

The only exit is to just exit.

What most Democratic leaders and Republicans alike refuse to acknowledge is that the war has already been lost and is unsalvagable. It's over and Saigon bail-out time is here again. It is now simply a matter of which faction wins, none of which will be favorable to neocon interests.

No matter who comes out on top, (the Jihadists, the Baathists or the pro-Iranian Shia leadership), the neocon dream of controlling the oil, establishing a military beachhead in the Middle East and showing the rest of the world that the U.S. is top dog, has failed miserably.

Conason's approach might allow Bush a face saving exit,(in the short term only) but Murtha's is more honest and probably less bloody in the long run.

When the dust finally settles, the necons should face justice for their war crimes and pro-war Democrats should face a long period in the political wilderness.

Clueless? Hapless? If I hadn't read this piece, and someone had told me that Joe Conason wrote those words about a particular party's plan for Iraq, I would have believed he was writing about the Bush administration and most Republicans.

But I would have been mistaken. He's writing about the Democrats. All of them. It seems Conason has now jumped on that bandwagon which throws blanket condemnations over the entire Democratic Party for their varying positions on Iraq. And this is just plain sad.

As I wrote yesterday in another letter, it's really quite disturbing to see every Democrat lumped together. Democrats have offered differing plans. Murtha, Feingold, Kerry, and even Lieberman. Whether you agree with them or not is up to you. It's called Democracy.

And I'll give Conason the benefit of the doubt by saying that his blanket condemnation is his opinion. I just don't like the way it's delivered. I think it's unfair to legislators like Murtha, Kerry and Feingold to call them hapless and clueless. I mean he sounds a bit like Representative Jean Schmidt there.

But reading this piece, one might make the argument that Conason's position here opens him to the same charges. He accuses Democrats of refusing "to acknowledge that we are in a bind." Excuse me? It was my understanding that the competing plans for getting out of Iraq being offered by many Dems are based on just that assumption. Does he truly believe that Representative John Murtha doesn't recognize that Iraq has become a quagmire and that we're in a bind there? Does he think that Russ Feingold and John Kerry somehow missed those salient points as well?

As for maintaining troop levels and training the Iraqi army, all three legislators have implicitly and explicitly discussed these issues as they are the unavoidable by-product of any discussion of the war. Conason talks about them as if they are suddenly new revelations.

Most bewildering is Conason's plan. It's described in forty words and has been offered by some Iraqis whom Conason doesn't even identify. Bring the Sunni insurgents to the bargaining table? Not even the "brave Murtha" is willing to touch that one?

Maybe they would touch that one if Conason offered up more than forty measly words on the subject. And maybe there is something there. But how would the reader know when there are absolutely zero details. Who are the Iraqis? What would the plan entail considering that the Shiites have been getting blown away for the past two years and might not exactly stick to an agreement despite what we or any Iraqis negotiate. Give us some substance, Joe!

I love Joe Conason's writing. He is a tough and fair critic and I love reading his column. I just think that here, he's being far too simplistic and a bit disingenuous in his arguments. I expect more out of him and I'm asking him, for his next column, instead of launching tired broadsides at the Democrats, offer them your plan. But put some meat on the bones when you do it. Maybe that will wake up many of those who truly deserve to be called hapless and clueless.

Mr. Conason rejects Jack Murtha's way out as not backed up by a realistic assessment. Such an assessment, in great detail and by an authoritative observer on the ground is to be found in the December Atlantic magazine.The article IF AMERICA LEFT IRAQ by Nir Rosen, who spent 16 months in Iraq explains why we should pull out of Iraq immediately because we are the cause of the insurgency. He examines every angle and seems more realistic than any writer I have seen. This article deserves to be read and thought about by everyone.

James Holton