By January 2009, will we have 7000 dead soldiers? Will that be "enough"?

I'm sorry, but I don;t understand why, when in 2006 the public spoke LOUDLY.. We said END IT !!.. we did not say. talk about it until 2009, and then start pulling soldiers out.

If the multinational corporations like Halliburton, Bechtel, KBR, Carlyle,Shell, Mobil, Chevron, Exxon, et al want the war "won", then let THEM use their swindled money to hire DynCorps, & Blackwater types to fight the war.. THEY are the only beneficiaries of this whole mess anyway.

Does anyone really think at this point that there are ANY Iraqis who will be willing to forgive and forget..and embrace the US as their saviour if and when this is finally over?

I don't!
It's totally different now. Realtime video and the internet have made war simply untenable.

During the "Big One", the folks at home got newsreels, months after the events and at theaters (no TV back then)..or they read dry accounts in the papers

Even during Viet Nam, it was all FILM, and had to be flown out, so by the time it passed the censors and made it onto TV, the events were days old.

Cell phones, camcorders, al Jazeerra, and the internet are bringing the war into our psyche like no other war.

We cannot win.. from DAY ONE, we lost. We INVADED a country whose military basically "stood down" and did not fight back. That makes us a world class bully, and what's happened since, only reinforces that image.

We can NEVER regain the world standing we once had..

the only thing that will come from extending this fiasco is more dead people on both sides, more hatred toward the US and a deeper plunge into the abyss of debt.

I'd be keen to remember this - KBR likes the war (and thereby Halliburton) - they make money on it no matter how long it goes.

Not so much for the oil companies themselves - That war expands - and it surely will on this course - they know they face product disruption - unsure supplies etc...

Wheat does seperate from the shaft at some point.

Joe