I find it interesting that American Enterprise Institute fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht wrote that Iraq's Sunni population was being sufficiently intimidated by Shiite paramilitary forces on the same day (April 3) that a truck bomb struck the al-Shroofi mosque, killing at least ten Shiites inside. All the indications that Sunni resistance to Shiite death squad activity has been steadily ramping up since February 22 seems to have been missed by Gerecht and it's a sad irony that the Sunni resistance has (literally) exploded since he wrote his essay. If Gerecht actually believes that a final display of "shock and awe" would put an end to the Iraqi resistance then he clearly lives in a neocon dream world, in which facts that don't support the home ideology have no place.

The way out is clear, but not palatable to the conservative cabal...Or presence incites hatred, and our insane amount of money sloshing around Iraq between warlords and contractors breeds deep and wide corruption. Pull out and devote the unbeliveable amount of money being flushed down the toilet in our doomed peacekeeping/nationbuilding morass and spnd that money developing safe nuclear engergy, wind energy, solar energy, biomass, and profoundly redesigned conumers goods, from electronics, to air conditioning, to transportation, that is at least several times more energy efficient than present goods. This money would be spent in the United States and allied countries, stimulatating our economies and creating new, skilled, high-paying, long-term jobs. Some of this obscene amount of money burned in our miltary budget for foreign mis-adventures and gold-plated miltary toys we don't need (F-22, DD-X destroyer, etc) can be spent to provide universal health care and properly fund education, with properly qualified teachers, world-class books, computers, labs, physical fitness equipment, and well-stocked community libraries/computer centers. The Military Industrial Complex sucks up over $500B per year (including Iraq expenditures)...take half of that and fund the programs above, and fix Social Security. Then repeal the shameful tax cuts for the rich and start paying down the deficit. Our priorities are completely out of whack, and the chickens will come home to roost in the near future unless we change our ways...may our children forgive us.

If the Bush team's "getting religion" on Iraq amounts to Condi Rice's sideways admission about "tactical errors" in the war, then I fail to see how it gets better from here. Based on Mr. Dreyfuss' description, the bad stuff on the ground just went from worse to worse than worse. Yet the Secretary of Defense says that there were no mistakes made. Such shocking denial in the face of the facts on the ground leaves the US troop presence in an absolutely hellish position. They have no choice but to fight on until they can't anymore. Soon, they will be outgunned, and forced to retreat. Short of dropping nukes on the place and leaving a big smoking hole in the ground where Iraq once stood, there will simply be nothing left to throw at this two-headed beast that keeps growing new heads. This war, touted as a quick and easy "shock and awe" strike, easily winnable has become the bane of our existence; the swirling vortex that threatens to swallow not only us, but the entire Middle East in its maw. And that the Administration can even publicly contemplate striking Iran while sinking further into this quicksand is testament to its complete madness. As I've said before: there is no honor to save. WE MUST LEAVE IRAQ NOW! We may as well accept the national and international embarrassment we'll face as the consequence of our collective hubris, and get ready to eat humble pie for the next little while. I suspect the next president will spend two terms just mending fences, assuming there are any left by then.

God help us all.

I agree with Mr. Kendall's letter about where we should go

from here. In the shortest run,I will support any old Democrat

for the House of Representatives, in hopes Democrats will take

the House Majority, and Conyers would assume chairmanship of

the House Judiciary Committee.

In the medium and longer runs, I would support the Democratic

Senators I have in my state. For President, the only Democrat

I could possibly not reject out of hand would be a Democrat who

didn't vote for Bush to invade Iraq to begin with. A Democratic

Senator who voted against the invasion to begin with would be

even more attractive. If that Senator-for-President ran on

Kendall's platform , including calling his own self the Cut And

Run candidate, I could actively support him.

I will not support a pro-war colostomy bag like Clinton,

Bayh, Biden, Lieberman, etc., under any circumstance. If that

is what the Democratic Party gives us, then let Haley Barbour

become President as far as I am concerned.

As to those death squads, didn't Ambassador Negroponte help

set them up? Wasn't that what he learned how to do in Central

America? Isn't that why they called it the "Salvador Option"?

I'm not saying, I'm just asking. I would like to see Salon do

some articles on whether these death squads are really Shia/Iran

death squads, or whether they are indeed what some people

have called them: Negroponte Death Squads?

The truth has not dawned on President Bush.

It never will.

Please stop posing pretend headlines when we all know the answer.

This will get much, much worse before--and if--it ever gets any better.

We'll be lucky if we have children alive to forgive us.

The Bush administration apparently is contemplating an attack on Iran:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060417fa_fact

I think ambassador Wilson got it right in an interview in September 2003.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2003_09_14.php

TPM: ... So, setting aside why we're in Iraq, how we go there, whether we should have gone in in the first place, where are we now? Where do you see our position right now?

WILSON: Well, I think we're fucked.

The headline you objected to was not Dreyfuss's. As the Salon piece notes, this article was first posted on the site TomDispatch.com for which Mr. Dreyfuss's headline was "Cutting and Running in Baghdad". The Salon headline is a foreshortening of Dreyfuss's opening line which suggests not that as the Salon shortcut suggests, the truth has dawned on Bush but that the truth of the actual situation in Iraq(i.e. urgency, ugliness, civil war) "seems finally to be dawning" -- not on Bush but on "the Bush administration". The making of a headline is a risky business, often whether wittingly or unwittingly distorting the general thrust of the full text. You (and other post-ers) might be interested in an article posted today on History News Network by a historian at the University of Minnesota/Duluth drawing parallels between some of the points Dreyfuss's article makes and analogies currently being made to discussions under the Nixon administration of the likelihood of "bloodbath" consequences to U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, and raising a number of points bearing on what any of us perhaps can or can't, will or won't do to understand the realities and complexities of issues and what may or may not be open to us to do to affect current and prospective governmental decisions and actions.

salonmarte