and also, if you think that iraq war made us unpopular, answer me this, why in the world would the rest of the world like a lone superpower controlling it?  maybe if you had traveled outside the US before Bush, you would know that this sentiment has been long held.  don't be so gullible.

Iraq needs to realize that the only people who can get them out of the mess they are in is themselves. I don't understand why they leave the government when they should try to push things through, it's all about compromises. One must make sacrifices in order to get what one needs. Right now, the Government needs to put Differences aside and focus on getting the nation back to a point where it can function better than it has.

you know, The Better Good, Greed is what appears to be driving many of these peoples motives.

Let's consider the consequences of leaving Iraq.

1. The British are pulling out of Basra and now the city is a total disaster. The remaining 5,500 British troops are hunkered down in their base which received over 600 mortar rounds last month. The city is totally run by clan-like militias and death squads. The population is terrified to leave their homes and they have no protection. According to the Geneva Conventions, we are legally obligated to protect the civilian population of the country we're occupying. We broke, we've got to fix it!
2. There will be a humanitarian crisis similar to the Cambodian killing fields after our departure from Vietnam. Millions of Iraqis will be killed in sectarian violence which will last for decades. America will be blamed.
3. We were once regarded as the greatest power on earth, now we'll be regarded as a paper tiger. America suffered 4,000 dead and now wants to run home. Weakness is provocative. If our enemies see us as weak, they will attack us harder and more frequently. Unfortunately, war comes with a blood tax. To show our strength, we also have to show we're not afraid to loose tens of thousands on the battlefield. I hate it, but it's true. China and India are emerging super-powers and neither would blink twice at suffering 4,000 dead in a single battle. Unfortunately, America doesn't have the will to fight this war. We'd rather watch American Idol than protect our vital interests. America has become weak and we will suffer for it if we don't WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE NEED A DRAFT PEOPLE!!!!!!!
4. As we withdraw, our remaining Arab allies will loose all respect for us. We loose our influence over their decisions. The region will slip into sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shiite. The world's primary source of oil exports will become unstable. The global economy will suffer from this instability. Money is a coward. Economies will faulter and this will cause a ripple effect until there's a global recession. Americans who demand their gas gussling SUVs and high salaries are in for a huge and rude awakening.
5. Iran will make huge gains in increasing their influence over the Persian Gulf region. They won't be able to officially take over in Iraq because they too will be seen as outsiders...but they won't try to take over, they're smarter than Bush and his crew. They'll settle for having massive influence over the emerging Shiite forces in Iraq to turn them distinctly in an Anti-US direction.
6. Al-Qaida will claim a huge victory. Islamic fundamentalism will enjoy yet another major victory. First they overthrew the Shaw during Iran's Islamic Revolution. Then they repelled the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Then they repelled the Iraqi invasion of Iran and help them off for 8 bloody years. Then they struck at western targets all over the world repeatedly with hardly any consequences. Then they pulled off 9/11 and survived. Then they pushed the US out of Iraq and possibly even out of Afghanistan in the near future. What's next...Saudi, Israel...the rest of the Middle East? What kind of world war would we be fighting then?

The fact is we can't leave Iraq. It the worst kind of stupidity to invade in the first place...but now we're there and we have to deal with it. Saddam Hussein was the cork keeping the evil geenie in the bottle, now we're that cork...like it or not. If the Geenie gets out, we'll be fighting a world war sooner rather than later...like it or not.
Our all volunteer military cannot fight this war alone. WE NEED A DRAFT!  

I hear all of this discontent yet when we had a chance to vote Bush out of office in the last election- and the country did not. The Republicans still have too much control in congress and yet a big portion of the public still support them. My anger is with all those who put Bush back in office and those that do not insist that their R congressmen take action against him. Too many in America are disconnected and only care about their daily activites and couldnt give a rats ass about Iraq. THIS IS THE PROBLEM!!

I do believe that many of our leaders had good intent with this mission but just could not think outside of their own cultural mindset to understand what it was that we were dealing with and that such would not think or act as we expected. Certainly no president since Jimmy Carter has had an inkling of understanding of the Middle Eastern cultural mindset. It is insulting to our society and our soldiers that we would exempt this culture from those standards of equality between religious preferences, race, gender, and respect for the different choices of others that is expected of us all at home and for which our brave soldiers fight to preserve. The manner in which women and children are treated and suffer under Islam globally is a high abomination to my own personal ethos and the highest shame that my government supports such regimes who spit on our standards and regard us as infidel polluters of their "holy soil."

That region will only know peace when two things transpire, the complete relocation of energy source production to other places and comprehensive renunciation of Islam, especially the Sharia form, as a lifestyle lawfully forced upon all people on pain of death. Until then we should try to take in the most we can in female and child refugees and leave the hardliners to the tender mercies of one another.

The long term best thing we can do as a people on the home front is to eschew our oil appetites as much as possible, <we so lack discipline as a people in this regard as our money is the defacto blood of Jihad> We desperately need to relearn as did our Yeoman and pioneer ancestors, to survive as much as possible on domestic resources of one's own making  and "vote" with our dollars so that these violent groups and their governnment sponsors (like Saudi Arabia and Iran) become cash starved and are forced to wage their social and religious wars on the backs of camels with spears as they have for the last several thousand years and leave the civilized world out of it. As for Al Quada in Afghanistan and Pakistan, what is left of our military capability should be applied with prejudice to their extermination for their crimes against our people done on our soil, no prisoners taken, then come home and stay there. Nation building begins at home and we are sorely in need of it.

Twenty twenty hind sight is all well and good.  I would not have handled the Iraq problem this way but I did not have every security agency on the planet telling me that WMD was ready and to be used.  You make the call on X day and X time.  The Sunni malcontents are grousing over demands made a year and a half ago.  These tribes have not been able to get along in peace for 4000 years why is the last 18 months so different.  NO matter what their education level the same blood fued mentality remains.  Maybe in another 1000 years they will get the message.  Next time we deciede to free a people lets make certain they want to be freed.  Support our troops!

A Phased draw-out and redeployment of our troops will inspire compromise amoung the Iraqi people. A peaceful compromise will reflect the good nature and compassion of their leaders. Unrest, will be attributed to their leadership's greed. I believe the good people in Iraq will come togeather and learn to live in peace. Unfortunately; I also believe that their country has growing pains to experience, just like so many other country's have in the past. A nations fate must be decided by that nations people, this will create strength and unity amoung it's citizens. The United States has liberated them from an evil dictator, and helped them elect their own leaders. The United States of America has faced simular obsticles; awaiting the Iraqi's, more than once on our own soil. Against oppression and for human rights. These same rights; that we are trying to hand to the Iraqi people, on a silver platter. It is hard to believe that the main obsticle we face in helping the Iraqi people, is that the Iraqi people can not get along with each other. And that is not a reason to place our troops, or our allies troops in danger!

Dear Jane, This country's situation is so very complex and involves many different groups. This report in September is going to be extremely crucial and it will have a strong effect on this Iraqi government.  Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi is venting frustration at the ineffectiveness of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the decisions that have been made or not made. This fractured country is in desperate need of a strong leadership of capable people. One only hopes that this will come soon for its people. They are fighting for peace and I hope they receive it soon. Peace to all!  

What's truly the saddest thing about this whole mess is the plain fact that the powers that be - despite their many combined years of dealing with Middle East leadership in all its contorted and corrupt forms, never had the notion dawn on them that the Iraqi people and their government would have no idea how to do that whole "governing" thing.  We set ourselves up for failure from the get-go.

What's equally sad is that despite the fact that there are a number of Iraqi people who truly do wish to have a good, solid, well-run country, those people are either too few in number to be effective, or the legacy of corruption and violence that is just the way of life there makes that vision virtually impossible, whether or not we try to intercede.

As Americans, it would take, at minimum, decades to be a welcome force in that country no matter what we do or how hard we try.  This is a fact, regardless of all of our best efforts.  We will forever be the outsiders.  The people of that country currently do not view their own country as being theirs and so are not taking care of it and are using us as the excuse not to because it is entirely too convenient not to.  Unfortunately, a lot of what's simultaneously happening is not a feeling of coming together as a country, but dividing up along sectarian lines.  These rifts have been simmering for centuries and the fault lines are now bursting to the surface.  There is positively nothing we can do to resolve that situation uless those involved are made to think it was their idea.  Unfortunately, the culture is receptive to violence and so I do not see that happening any time soon.

And Maria in NY and Tony in Portland, I understand you think this is a Democrats calling the Republicans out on something, but at this point, it's no longer a them versus us issue.  At this point, we need to look at it from a cost analysis standpoint and see what we're getting for all of our billions of tax dollars spent and lives lost.  Yeah, we build beautiful things for the Iraqi people who I'm sure are glad to have those things.  But because of the exceptionally poor security that the Iraqis are attempting to provide, many of those nice things get blown up because they are permanently viewed as originating from us.

The terrible reality is that if we had really wanted to make sure a change of government actually took, we should have done every last thing possible to enable a revolution by the people.  Yes, it would have meant likely decades of behind-the-scenes, cloak-and-dagger work, but in the end, the people would have felt a responsibility to take charge of their own country.  I like to go back to the old adage: "Nobody ever washed a rented car."  It's true.  If they don't feel they own it, they're never going to take care of it.  Simple as that.

Tony in Portland, my bad.  You were referring to the comments posted by Jerry from CA.  Didn't mean to catch you up in my comments.

But regardless, I think we've gone well beyond party politics here.  At this stage in the game, there's no use in finger-pointing.  We can do nothing about what has happened before this minute.  The only power we still have is what decision we're going to make for the future.

Mr. President Bush I think you do realize the mistake that you did by invading Iraq.
Who will pay for the chaos that we did create in Iraq and the hundred of tousands of inocent people killed,
not to say that we spend 10bilions each mo. and 8 million that left they homes.
I tell you how will pay our children.
One day GOD will ask you why you did it
Personally I did voted for you, I was wrong.  

When Hillary gets in the oval office, she will only train the Iraqi police and army, secure the border and only fight the insurgency when called upon... Oh, jeepers, aren't we doing that now?
We need to move the whole army up to the north and pacify the Turks and Kurds.  Let the rest of the country go to the the shites and sunnis.  The last group standing can have what is left.  The kurds will have a modern country in less than 5 years because they are sensible.

What a bunch of spineless whiners.  As wars go this is tiny.  We had single weeks in Viet Nam that were worse than this whole year.  A lot of mistakes have been made, starting with assuming the Iraqi exiles had better control than they actually did, and appointing that twit Bremer.  But there is a larger picture.  Why did we only use a limited force?  Two reasons: we wanted to appear as an army of liberation, not of occupation, and because thanks to Bill C, we didn't HAVE half a million troops to put out there like Desert Storm had.  When your predecessor cut the Army in half, you go with what you have.

Let's also remember why this all happened: The UN kept passing resolutions for Saddam to prove he disarmed.  He kept ignoring them.  We gave Saddam a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.  Technically, invading Iraq was just a continuation of the Gulf War due to Saddam's repeated violations of the cease-fire agreement.  And for all you bashers, just remember that Senator Clinton said she had not relied on the White House for her info, but had independently confirmed that going to war was a good idea.  That little sound bite should make a great political commercial next year.  

For all you that brag they helped end the Viet Nam War, let's look at what happened afterward.  South Viet Nam, a legally chartered nation under a treaty sponsored by the UN, was invaded and conquered by another UN member.  Hundreds of thousands died from the "reeducation" efforts and the refugees it generated.  That's something to be really proud of.  And how about Cambodia?  What's a few million men, women and children dead, if the benevolent Marxist/Maoist state triumphs?  

I agree it is about waiting for US to pull out and settling old scores. Once we leave and we should leave I imagine they will kill all the Sunni's. We have taken  a country and turned into a  great shamble. Congrads George Bush. You should tell us another 1000 lies everyone else has bought it  thus far. and will continue to buy it. I agree we need to have a change of power and vote everyone out of power and bring in new. maybe new faces and new say in congress will get the point across that we are tired of the lies

Yes, Vietnam is doing fine now but they did not ram airplanes into the towers of NY. Okay, it was a mistake also for going into Vietnam but going after terrorists is not a mistake. Clinton had a bigger chance then and we would not have been in this mess in the first place if Clinton did what he was suppose to do back then but, he did not! Now, we are faced with a bigger problem, the President waged war and now with the war,politics etc. What we should do now is take the power from all the political people in congress and get the right ones there that will stand up for America and its people. I know it is easy to say lets us get out now but also think what happened in Vietnam when troops pulled out. Millions were killed, and that will also happen in Iraq. The solution is political pressure on the present government of Iraq and inform them that they must take the lead or face the horror of it all and the American troops will step aside and let the religious factions fight it out. And when they are all out of ammunition and people and the country is but in ruins. Then the Americans can take over again and establish a new government for Iraq. Anyway, it will take a year for the pull out, pressure them or else, also secure the border between Iraq,Syria,and Iran. To  keep these countries from arming either factions in Iraq. I know the American people are angry but that is not the way to resolve the problem, its like chess, think before you move and all the angles must be set to win without prejudice. Apparently this did not happen such as so.

It looks like the political solution in Iraq has all but disappeared.  The Republicans need to own this mess they created.  But will they?  NO.  The way our own country has been run, I think it is we who are headed for "total chaos" as we are sinking much of our borrowed money into Iraq.  Meanwhile our own infrastructure is collapsing, health care afordability is in crisis, our freedoms are being ripped up by congress and the president, and jobs are shipped overseas through mega corporations while the American middle class collpases into mortgage hell.

I wonder if the next successful presidential candidate can scare us into continuing this mess by claiming to be pro-God and anti-abortion?  Will we Americans awaken to reality?  Or will we be manipulated again into believing some paraniod fantasy that says giving afordable health care to all people, having good jobs for Americans, paying for our government spending with taxes, investing in education so it is afordable again are all agendas promoted by evil doers?  Our current government is leaving us with neither freedom nor security.  Some people I know are destined to rot in historical hell along with the Fascists of Italy and Germany.  I hope the majority of Americans won't follow along and rot in the same hell because we lost our common sense.

I think voting with hopes of electing a relative to the retiring/retired president of the United States is a major mistake. Personally I don't think George Bush is call the shots. I understand the state national guard is still trying to find out where Bush served his full duty.

We went into Iraq without a plan. A nation that George Bush Senior knew very well would result as it has for the kid therefore cut his advance short of taking him out, now we know what Saddam ment when he said, Bush is starting "THE MOTHER OF ALL WARS." We currently still remain in Iraq without a plan. Bush will go down as the worst president ever to hold the office, and I would venture that tag may hold him with that label for the next 500 years. Behold, there is no elected republican anywhere that will escape the same legacy. Bush already declared victory in Iraq, you know, about three thousand dead troop ago and now we will receive some earth shaking new come September. I wonder what that's going to cost us.

There's an old saying, "Once a lier always a lier," so get ready.

Hindsight is always 20/20, a great majority of americans believed going to war was the right thing to do at the time, no one had any idea the incompetence with which it would be carried out. Nontheless here we are. Let's give the generals what they need to win, a real troop surge (double current troop strength) stop trying to fight a politically correct war, win this thing, and bring our brave soldiers home. The alternative(possible collapse of the entire middle east, the beginning of the third world war)is to horrible to imagine

I voted for Bush, I'm very sorry to say, aside from the small lopsided tax cuts we got, I've not seen anything else positive come out of his administration at all..When i see him do a interview, or a speech, I feel like slapping him up side the head because of his idiotic grins, and jokes he constantly tries to make..I'd much rather have a President that takes whats going on in todays world much more serious than he portrays himself to be doing, whats going on Today, and Tomorrow is no laughing matter,and he should not try to promote a joke of the day during every television appearance he has...It just pisses me off to no end every time i see it, After hundreds of billions of dollars,Iraq is still like a run down hotel with no plumbing or electricity where gangs hangout to kill each other,and use our hard earned tax dollars to promote even more violence,death and corruption, We have very brave soldiers dying everyday for a country that doesn't seem to care one bit for the sacrifices our armed forces and their families have made,and are making for their right for freedoms they never had,Iraqis' need to realize Freedom Is not Free,they need to make more sacrifices if they want to be free, they dont stand up to the death and corruption that their own government and people put onto each other,and cant even agree on splitting oil wealth,when theres only three groups to split it between,Shi'ite,Sunnis,Kurds "divide by three" Should be easy enough to figure out you corruptive pigs... We need to pull our troops back to the Iraqi borders, and guard against the infiltration and exit of these radical murderers,and the Instigating Iranians,of which are causing most of the turmoil now in Iraq, and let the Iraqi police,military,security forces enforce their own laws in their own cities and provinces..I also think the US,should get more balls when dealing with Iran,and retaliate militarily if they continue to help kill our soldiers..We're looking like a country of cowards letting Iran walk all over us,and gaining influence all over the middle east spreading their "DEATH TO AMERICA" hate to any militant that will buy into their garbage,we sit back on our hands as they supply weapons to kill our soldiers,and just telling them we know your doing it and you need to stop doing that, isn't enough,and we dont do nothing about it and the killing of our soldiers goes on..The Military, and the US Govt. is going to have a very long hard road, if they continue to let radical goverments, organizations and groups get away with the crap they pull on us without any recourse, they will have no fear of retribution, which has always been our greatest asset,to invoke the fear of our retaliation for their actions..Whatever came of Bushes great words after 911, there will be no safe haven for terrorists, or any country that gives them safe haven..Iran has been on our list of terrorist states for many years,and blatantly kills our soldiers by proxy..what are we doing but giving them safe haven by not reacting to their agression against our soldiers.."our fellow Americans" The US Gov't better start getting some balls to deal with the regimes that are making a embarrassment of our Nation on the world stage,due to poor political planning,poor leadership,loss of participation of allies,and plain outright pissing away Americas riches for nothing...want to know who the next superpower will be, CHINA, with all of the products we buy from China,They are rushing to buy up all the oil in the world market from our advesaries,and also allies,we have built their military into a formitable foe,and it's still growing very fast,all mostly financed by the US.and their astronomical trade imbalance nobody seems to be serious about curtailing as China drags it's feet in properly valueing it's currency,dragging it out as long as possible to put as many American companies out of business as they can before they are forced to comply. Why do we invest so heavily in a communist run country,when their is so much good we could do investing in the African,South American nations with no weapons pointed at us?? where does sensible logic and greed seperate themselves in a responsible government that was founded by our fore fathers for the people of the United States, not for the peoples republic of China.

Most of these postings are funny.  Listening to your misguided anger is hillarious and I'm sure I'll be attacked for stating all of this.  I've been in the Middle East as a sailor of your country for 18 years now, as of 5 Aug, when the USS Independence pulled into the Gulf of Oman to begin hedging against Saddam the first time.  I went to Somalia, I did several deployments to the Persian Gulf since, in support of Operation Southern Watch, and I'm back here in Bahrain watching the carnage from afar.  Here's clue #1: Your Presidents are not responsible for the carnage here.  #2: Forget what you hear and see on the news, most of it is put there to sell you a roll of toilet paper anyway.  #3: Congress and candidates don't have a clue how to fix the world and terrorism.  #4: Your hatred and bickering don't solve it either.

I'm not a fan of GW, I quite dislike the guy personally.  I didn't like Clinton either, nor his politics and tendency toward socialism. I don't like the way GW sold the war to the American people, but your news outlets sold a lot of toilet paper to get you all to approve it.  That said, the decision to go into Iraq was legal.  From my 18 years of watching it up close and personal, Iraq was failing to meet the obligations it agreed to in the terms of surrender.  They continually launched rockets at our pilots and we continually took out radar sites and rocket launchers and we were spending billions of dollars doing it.  You all didn't give a rat's behind about the danger your military was in then, so don't tell me you care about us now...all of a sudden.  Our job, boiled right down to it, is to die for our country, hopefully in less numbers than our adversary; we are doing that job today, in a huge way, but NOT the hundreds of thousands professed by the left.  Tens of thousands, sure.  That's our job, deal with it.  They want to fight for their God (which, by the way, is your God, if you're Christian), our job is to arrange the meeting.  The lesson any Vietnam vet will tell you we learned there, is politicians don't and can't be allowed to fight wars.  Why are you allowing that to happen today?  That's the big disgrace to me.

Now, those of you who want a pullout, so do many of us who have been overworked for the last 20 years.  But not out of Iraq, NOT right now.  Yes, the Arabs and Persians are still fighting among their selves; notice I didn't call them by their sects.  This fight is not about Islam, it is about peoples who have been conquered since circa 700 BC, for those of you who are saying 2000 years, you need to brush up on history.   The atrocities I have seen in the last 25 years from the government of Saddam, warranted the invasion, and I'm glad he's dead (not very Christian, but it is human).   Now, what have we accomplished in Iraq?  #1 We have proven to the warlords here that our great nation can and will come to fight.  I cannot stress how important that is to the mindset of the radicals here.  It is also something we didn't do in Somalia because we were wearing your peace loving blue berets under the United Nations, where we gave rifles to our troops, but no bullets.  Now they know we have the resolve to fight and protect ourselves.  #2 Yes there is a lot of violence, but run the statistics.  The bombs kill a lot of people and your news organizations sell more toilet paper.  Do they report about the numbers of people killed in violence (dramatically smaller) in our country?  Percentage-wise, there is actually less violence in Iraq. #3 Iraq is rejoining the world population and has more open borders than it had before, the people are doing what it took our country 11 years to complete, putting a country together.  Are there issues?  Absolutely, does it warrant your anger and "expertise" in the issue?  Probably not.  Let those of us who work for you, do our jobs and see them through to completion.  

This Vice President in Iraq and the party behind him are only doing what our own government did when the democrats were whining about not having enough power in the government, why do you see this as failure?  This is politics, nothing more.  Fear not, it will work out, just like our government does.  One thing is for sure, we are spending a lot of money.  That's the price of war.  But, as opposed to the cold war, we're actually doing more than training and your services are battle hardened now. The coalitions I work with every day, and yes there are 3 coalitions here representing over half the world's nations, have a sense of cooperation that is unparalleled during any point in this world's history.  So you sit back there, with your sharp criticisms, largely uneducated about the real story, spout your political garbage back and forth about which party is correct or more moral than the other.  Please, do it, me and my brothers-in-arms paid for it with a lot of blood.  But do us all a favor.  

Quit caring about us; if you're going to keep playing politics with the great job we are doing here for you, protecting your national and economic interests. I can't tell you how upset we get hearing how bad of a job we're doing so your candidate can move in the polls.  Put a little thought into the political process and don't let your candidates blind you with these issues that do nothing, but inflame your emotions.  Vote, please, but do it with a mind of your candidate’s philosophy and don't let them blind you with issues to keep you fighting over things you can't control.  

Your military will fight wars always.  That's what we do and that's what you pay us to do, so you don't have to.  We're doing our job and we're doing it well, thank you very much.  Get back into what your candidate thinks about how to make our government and populous work.  Think about statements that don't make sense, like...If we used the money we're spending on the war for...maybe we could put people to work in our country.  That doesn't make much sense to somebody who listens to the business cycles and realizes that if we put too many more people to work in our country, we'd have a shortage of workers, increasing wages to such a point, inflation and interest rates would skyrocket and kill our economy.  Think about what your politicians say, don't just eat it as the truth.  If it were the truth; they wouldn't be politicians.  Have a nice election cycle.  We're here for you.  Let us stay here for you.

If the idea was to distract the core of extremism, rerouting them to activities in their immediate theater, then the war has been a great success. Creating sectarian strife has created divisions among extremists, and highlighting tensions among middle east nations. The middle easts presents the only vialbe source for cheaper oil, which, if freely accessed would allow China and other LDCs to grow even faster. While this cannot be stopped, we effectively barred from entering the market, thus securing a further foothold on our economic prowess. In generall... brilliant success. Too bad no one sees it in terms of game theory.

It will never ever get through to some, that THIS country (the US)  was not formed in a day or without a terrible death toll...nor was any other.  Why do most treat this as a basketball game, with a define time frame and an 'microwave mentality'.   It won't be 'Done' for awhile.  Our own evolved for years and years.

Al-Maliki's time is up. Him and his Saddam-lite thieves and cronies have sucked enough while U.S. soldiers and mostly Sunni civilians have paid the price. The Sunni punishment has gone far enough.We must insist the Iraqi's policies balance the interests and resources to the Sunni, Shite, and Kurdish peoples now. BTW, the U.S. soldiers in Iraq would like to have September sorta OFF duty so they could lie under air conditioners like Al-Maliki's government. Creeping down a road at 120 F waiting for a sniper or bomb while the people you are keeping in power coool it and count their gold SUCKS! The USA needs to get real and insist the Iraqi govenement manage and fund their own rebuilding contracts so we can do the same here at home.

Patric, Philadelphia:
 The only thing i don't agree with you is "the lessrer of two evils" they (dems) are the greater of the two.The only thing on their minds is 08 they don't care about anything else. We the people have taken a back seat to the election.As for this national health care nonsense i have family in Canada and they have had to leave and go to to N.Y. state or DIE waiting for test that would save their lives.Things we take for granted here are begged for in Canada.And they pay up to 48%of their income in taxes to have it,and it sucks.Once the government gets their hands on our money they do what suits them. Also someone made a comment about how much the war costs and that our bridges are falling. Well why doesn't Washington stop the PORK AND USE THE MONEY NOT TO BUY VOTES BUT TO REPAIR OUR BRIDGES INSTEAD.The war and Pres. Bush have been blamed for everything else so why not the bridge too and while were at it let's blame him for the mine collapse too.If the Dem's now in power really thought that the war was wrong they would have stopped the money a long time ago. But instead the put on this show that only stops everyone of the politicians from doing anything of importance.They wont or can't stop the war so all they do is waste our time and money on the things that will accomplish nothing.We still have a border that needs to be shut down yet they want to give the children of ILLEGAL ALIENS in state tuition. The reason is that it is not the fault of the children well how is it the fault of the taxpayers ??We who have spent our lives paying taxes have to pay out of state tuition for out kids and support the kind of nonsense they propose. Let's raise taxes, should be the battle cry for the 08 election and let's kill off any of the people that have worked all their lives to support our way of life and give it to those that broke our laws. Yup i'm voting for that in a pigs A---

Here are the latest, followed by other Global War on Terror (a/k/a&#160;GWOT)&#160;news of interest.
From August 7:
Greetings:
I know many of you are busy enjoying summer vacations, so this will be a brief email.
The conclusion to Bread and a Circus is

Last night I heard NPR say as much while headed home, something to the effect that Petraeus and Crocker&amp;#8217;s &amp;#8220;relentlessly measured optimism&amp;#8221; had won the day on Capitol Hill and then, even later, as PBS boradcast the BBC&amp;#8217;s

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