...Iraq is a great diversion. It's flypaper pure and simple. And it's working. Arguing about what's going on IN Iraq isn't the question after Saddam went down, it's what's going on outside that is now the issue.

And the bottom line is Iraq has bought us 5 years of distraction at the cost of roughly 2500 US lives. The government is willing to make such a human expenditure to avoid larger terror attacks.

That would mean 20 years = 10,000 people. That's not an attractive figure, but next to the costs of other conflicts in the world it's bottom dollar</>.

Look at France. Their Muslim problem has cost them 2500 injuries and millions of Euros in damages - just from a sustained intifada in just 1 year!

The only way we lose the conflict is when we are overrun and must cut off our arms and legs to survive. France has already reached that critical point. No one expects them to return to the monstrous way they treated the Tunisians, but Brigitte Bardot was right - France is doomed because of unequal birthrates and part of their populace who want to turn France into the new Tunisia. If they don't do some serious housecleaning, the France that was created after the revolution will be gone and a thousand years of culture will be flushed down an Islamic sewer.

So Iraq is great. It's a valuable military strategic base of operations. Look at Disneyland and Anaheim and the rest of LA. LA is a sewer. Folks fly in, stay at a hotel see Disneyland and then fly out again. The surrounding neighborhood can be a ghetto but it doesn't matter because Disneyland is ALL that matters and is the value.

Same with Iraq. Our new bases, the airfields are the value and what goes one elsewhere in the ghettos of sectarian violence are not of any great concern. Islam has had Iraq for far more than 2 years - its had much of Iraq for well over a thousand years.

In my cynical moments I suspect some folks eagerly await an Iranian bomb and an attempt on Israel. They figure it will achieve two goals:

1) Justification to use nukes on Islamic nations
2) remove a major reason the US has always been hated in the ME

If Korea is a buffer for China, Israel is a buffer for the west. It's been a great distraction, but now we have Iraq as the great distraction. Our leadership is ONLY concerned about US lives and US continuity of government. Big terror in the US threatens that stability and so creating buffer, fly-paper zones is the name of the game.

We wont be leaving Iraq anytime soon, probably not during the 21st century if we can avoid it. It is now our most powerful military base in the region and a tool with which we can launch first strikes against any Islamic nation that sponsors terrorism. We militarily own the Middle East now, we don't need to own every block or keep the lawns green and mowed, nor do the neighbors need to be well mannered or quiet - we just need to have the bases - and that is what we now do have.