another militia and they know it. Dunno about the last, never been in an ambulance due to a bar fight, they may say that but I've never seen it happen....

Kinda like a Blue Ribbon Panel, the outcome of which noone has any intention of following. I wouldn't under-estimate the local political value of Maliki having a panel develop a plan, he never had any intention of implementing...or had any hope of being approved by the Assembly.

Okay, I withdraw the comment... :)

Certainly I can answer your question and explain why the results mirror what you'd expect to hear.

That answers that.

Seriously three thoughts:

- The poll is 'man on the street,' not the leadership (be it tribal, sectarian or national) and Iraqis are xenophobic and don't want occupiers (I always said succumbing to the UN and saying we were an 'occupying power' was abysmally dumb...) any more than you would so they naturally do want us gone and say so. As the unrest has not been quelled, that sentiment has grown. That they answer that way is no surprise at all; what they really want or are willing to grudgingly accept is a different thing.

- As the sectarian killing has increased, thoughts become more dangerous and are carefully voiced lest one invite attack.

- The ham handed approach of the Army and Marines in the first 18 months an the slow to change efforts over the next 18 significantly roused anti-American feeling; thus the increase in those who'd rather we were elsewhere.

So, in other words, you're broadly correct in your postulation but you're wrong in your final assessment; Makes perfect sense if you realize that folks in the ME are emotional, say what they think one wants to hear and that they will rarely tell you their true feeling on most topics (particularly if you're an infidel or will repeat what they say to one) to preclude you having an advantage over them --and they resent foreigners.

There's also this LINK. Apologies for the source of the story but do note it's an AP wire story. Apparently the unbiased MSM has not deigned to pick it up... :)

On (i), I think you should consider the possibility that there is not such quantum of force. Or, more precisely, that such a quantum of force is so large that it cannot be achieved even in theory, due to the side-effects, at home, at theater, and abroad, it would generate.

This is not quite the same as your point (ii), which states that we may never be able to assemble said quantum of force for whatever reason, and thus we should leave.

What is the difference? That your formulation is the force tail wagging the political dog. Force is not a solution, it is a tool, and as such it is one of many tools. You don't give up driving a screw if your hammer doesn't work; you try something else, hopefully a screwdriver.

Put another way, the main problem with the occupation has not been the lack of will to bomb more, it has been a lack of will, and intent, to actually make Iraq a better place for Iraqis. So the army was disbanded from one day to the next and a quarter million armed and humiliated men were also removed from their source of income. The admin applied ultra free-market formulas in Iraq it would not dare try in the US, and the results were another 100,000 Iraqis out of work due to the sudden shuttering of hundreds of government-owned factories around the country.

Meanwhile, Iraqis saw how contractors such as KBR profited from poor or incompetent work under relaxed contractual conditions, while Iraqi businesses and professionals got the tail end of the spoils by being second or third tier subcontractors.

And on the streets hundreds or Iraqis were shot at checkpoints for not understanding Western hand gestures, in Iraq.

So you combine all of this and add the religious fundies to the mix and really, what could you possibly expect would happen?

The politicians aren't really dealing with it because the right answer requires treating Iraq not with more force, but differently on the political level. The bush administration is incapable of doing that, and the democrats don't want to get at the heart of the issue because they too have economic ties with people who have profited from the war.

and therefore had an exposure to the less saintly aspects of human behavior.

The current political discussions are rather nonsensical, the politicians are trying out their strategies of what can be accomplished and what can't in real time while being watched. As unpalatable as that is, I prefer it to the previous six years when everything was decided beforehand politburo style. The folks on Capitol Hill are terrified - the Republicans because they're potentially looking at a long sojourn in the desert and the Democrats because they're not sure they can ride the tiger. Both sides are trying out their talking points without the benefit of focus group testing - that's why it sounds so unreal at times.

As to your first point, I'm not sure that delivery of a certain number of US troops would work absent quite a few other conditions being met - and I see no sign of any of them even being attempted. I agree that there are dangers in a pullout, but there are also dangers in staying - I just wish some people in the administration had thought of some of this beforehand.

I thought the situation was pathetic because of the impotence of congress, the opposition, the press and the public in opposing Bush. For example, for years the focus was on the Rlame scandal which never impressed me very much though it absorbed so much attention of Bush's opponents. I could never understand how it could drag on so long and uncover so little. Seemed to me that there were much bigger fish to fry.

The latest Iraq vote in congress and these new revelations about the firings of the crown prosecutors could be a turning point. I've never been a fan of using the courtroom as an arena for a political fight, but that's a reality of the US system that I'm just starting to appreciate.

Why don't you call me and we can discuss it civilly with the NSA guy whose job it is to monitor both of our phones?

Yes, the folks who lied us into this war are, in fact, the other side -- they're against representative or accountable government, and they have a lot more in common with the Islamist terrorists, politically, than they have with me. Just ask Dinesh D'Souza; he'll clear you up. I share a country with them, and I am happily bound by its laws as to how to engage in political work, but yes, the decisionmakers and their hardcore supporters are, in fact, as much the enemy as the Islamists they work so very hard to empower. Both want me subjugated: forced to worship, work, marry, and raise my children as they see fit.

Congressional Vote on the subject. These things happen from time to time.

In his words, all liberals are 'demonic,' so he gets treated like someone who calls perfectly nice people like me 'demonic.'