Do not leave. Clear up the mess.

Indeed. Six American soldiers killed in the last 24 hours. Three billion dollars a week in US money being spent in Iraq. Our troops at the lowest state of readiness in years. Muslim’s opinion of the United States at an all time low across the middle east. Yes, this meddling abroad may very well killl us. Has anyone looked into what motivated the British bombers to carry out their vile acts of terror? Was it British freedom they despised, or the British meddling in the middle east?

I honestly can’t see how you and other neo-cons can continue to stand behind this interventionalist policy. It has not going at all well compared to the money spent and lives lost. When you’re burning 3 billion a week, of course there will be some progress, but the macro-view is clearly bad. And here you are advocating “staying the course,” when the course is dozens of Iraqi civilians dying each day and inflation is up 70%. The Kurds are already taking down the Iraq flag and flying the flag of Kurdistan. If things really were so good, why would they do that?

Your vilification of the MSM reminds me of Vietnam, when the Whitehouse was saying we were winning, and reporting VC kills each week. Only when reporters started showing the reality of the situation did the people wake up to the futility of the war.

So Giaus, what criteria should we use to measure our success or failure in Iraq? You had mentioned earlier that number of attacks going down was a sign of success; should we consider the bounce back in attacks a sign something is wrong? You and the administration compare the anti-war crowd to the 1939 attitude toward Hitler. I consider the administration’s blind fanaticism towards making Iraq work to be the real source of concern.

True to form, the defeatists in the media as lead by the New York Times managed to find nothing but the negatives in a 65 page pentagon report that talked as much about progress as it did about continuing problems.

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