If any of my undergraduate Critical Thinking students tried to lay that banal False Dilemma shit on me, he'd/she'd get an "F" on the assignment. The WORLD has a stake in Iraq Regional stability. The WORLD should be asked honestly to help establish it (with all that such implies, like loosening Cheney's death grip on Iraq). The choice simply NOT one of Unilaterally-Stay-The-Course vs Cut-and-Run, and ANYONE should be able to comprehend that.

Mr. Cheney, go yourself.

How carbombing 20 people a day last week is different from carbombing 20 people a day this week and calling it civil war? Seems to be just different packaging of the same old product.

How much longer can war-weary Iraqis continue to take this insane level of violence and insecurity? 4 hours of electricity a day? I can't even imagine what daily life is like for the citizenry. They deserved far better from the country that destabilized the situation. Bush II has opened a Pandora's box of sectarian violence and chaos and there is no way the lid is going back on. What with the Administration's non-existent post-war planning, troop levels far below that recommended by military leadership, and a multitude of analyst reports predicting this very situation, how exactly is this result a surprise? There is no true commitment on the Administration's part to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure now that the $18 billion in rebuilding funds has been squandered, embezzled and pissed away fighting the insurgency that no one (in the Administration) could possibly have predicted. What happened to the Marshall plan and MacArthur-Japan reconstruction references? This is where we stand after $400 billion spent and thousands dead? How does this shitstorm possibly get better? Now the Administration will be looking for the easiest way to wash its hands of this insanity. The writing is on the wall. Whoever wins the White House in 2008 (my guess is John McCain) will have to clean up Bush's mess while he and his cronies go whistling away to greener pastures.

Dear Mr. Cheney,

Please do yourself, this country, Iraq, and the rest of the world a huge favor and SEE A PSYCHIATRIST!!!! It's clearly obvious that you have some sort of serious cognitive disorder. Perhaps you need to take a permanent vacation. You must be very stressed out, what with your shooting your friend, Mr. Whittington, and all.

"The troops are chasing down terrorists. They're protecting themselves and protecting the people, and -- but a major function is to train the Iraqis so they can do the work."

President Bush does not intend to have our troops become more aggresively involved in this very apparent civil war? How then does he propose to protect the Iraqi people? Our President has such a disconnect when it comes to the real world it can only be nothing short of terrifying for our allies. Why do we have a standing army deployed in Iraq doing special forces type missions, such as chasing down terrorists and training the the Iraqi army?

The President says that success in Iraq means a unified Iraq. Whose gage of success is he refering to? Is it his personal definition or what the average Iraqi citizen would call success? This President has been successful at enhancing the bottom line of Haliburton. He has had success at destroying our credibilty throughout the world. He has been very successful at needlessly putting our citizens and our soldiers in harms way. He has all the while shown absolutely not one glimmer of recognition that any of that matters.

When does it stop? At what point does some symbolic ref throw a flag? Nothing relating to this Administration's policy in Iraq has either been based in fact or resulted in one single projection coming to fruition other than Saddam would no longer be in control of Iraq.

From Reuters:

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department is winding down its $20 billion reconstruction program in Iraq and the only new rebuilding money in its latest budget request is for prisons, officials said on Tuesday....

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The Iraqi electricity grid is in tatters, thugs roam the streets killing at will, oil production is under constant sabotage, but there's still plenty of money for super-large military bases and prisons. If this is the Bush Administration's strategy for winning the peace and the hearts of minds of the Iraqi people, I think we should all get down on our knees and start praying.

As more and more supporters of the war are now trying to back away from it, it seems to me their tactics can be divided into two rough categories.

Those who are not in the administration itself--and are therefore free to critique it--argue that the war itself was a good idea, but who knew that we would bungle it so badly? (Kristol, Packer, Bremer [ironically], etc.)

Those in the administration have to say something else, so now they're trying to lay the blame at the Iraqis' doorstep. If Iraq falls into civil war, it's because moderates failed to stand up, or Islam is in compatible with democracy, or what have you.

I find both of these positions morally reprehensible, but the administration's version (also endorsed by David Brooks of the NYT) makes me sick to my stomach. It's like setting a person's house on fire, and then criticizing them if they don't have the ingenuity or wherewithal to put it out. The reason Iraq is falling apart today is that we never had a real plan to keep it together. The reason we never had a plan to keep it together is that we just didn't care enough about the consequences of war. We just thought about its abstract politics--the 'messages' it would send, the 'ideals' it represented, etc. Well, goddamn you, there's people involved, and trying to pass the buck onto them makes you not only responsible for their deaths, but also with smearing their reputations. How dare you!