I'm not sure I can say what the outcome will be if we pulled out immediately. Iraq could fall into a very bloody civil war which I'm not sure is a bad thing in the long term. I hate the thought of the people that would be hurt and killed in the chaos but I have the feeling that the area would factionalize and become 2 or 3 separate entities as they were before the British meddled in their affairs.

One of the problems with staying is that it legitimizes the numerous insurgent groups because they have this common enemy to blame their anger and violence on. If we did as Murtha suggested and pull out to the border, the rotten ones would quickly expose themselves to the Iraqi people for the common thugs many of them are.

All I know is what we're doing seems to not be working and it's the definition of madness to do something that gets a bad result over and over without learning from it.

Art