re: The people killing us in Iraq
According to one al Qaeda statement, we have apparently killed about 4,000 foreign fighters in Iraq. This implies that we are, in fact, using Iraq as a "sponge."
You can, of course, subscribe to the odd theory that all of these jihadists were incensed ONLY by our attack on "secular" Iraq, and would have simply slept through our occupation of al Qaeda base Afghanistan.
If the only U.S. military presence in the Middle East was 150,000 troops in Afghanistan, I submit that our casualty rate there by now would be much higher than the current 280 or so, and that the costs involved would be significantly higher than what is currently allocated to only that part of the war.
Donald has not given this any thought.