The Democrats wanted to bail out at the height of the sectarian violence. When the surge was proposed, they fought against it while Bush pushed for it, then afterwards spent month after month fighting tooth and nail to poison the funding bills to force us out. When progress began to show, they told Petraeus to his face that he was lying about it.

The surge worked.

12 troops died of hostile action in Iraq in August, and 8 in September, out of what, about 135,000? If this number drops to 4, it will officially be safer to be a soldier in Iraq than to live in parts of Detroit.

As for removing the troops, we had troops in Japan for seven years after their surrender. We had troops in Europe deterring Soviet attack for decades. In fact, for many years, we had twice as many troops in Europe than we have now in Iraq.

On the subject of the surge, the Democratic Party is completely screwed. Iraq was vastly improved by the change in tactics the Democrats had long been demanding, and then the Democrats had to be dragged kicking and screaming the entire way. It's still like pulling teeth to get some Democrats to admit the surge was a good idea. The media has mostly adopted a dead silence on the subject.

For once, deal with the astounding concept that a liberal might actually be wrong about something.