I find myslef not agreeing too much with anyone here... Iraq was broken before we got there... The only way it was, in the very least, governable was having a heavy-handed dictator... That was probably the best case scenerio we could have expected then and it may be a likely outcome after we are gone...

(That is heresy, Bobert... We ***have to fix*** it and leave the Iraqi people ***safe*** before we leave...)

That, "my friends", is John McCain's plan for Iraq and if those are out goals than we will indeed be in Iraq for the next 100 years...

Those should not be our goals... I agree with T-Bird somewhat in that replacing a bogus UN peacekeeping force with a more legit UN peacekeeping team is not logical... The bottom line is that in our disrupting the balence of power we have ignited a civil war... Lots of us predicted this outcome during the mad-dash-to-Iraq days and it is very much a ***reality*** and if the US or UN peacekeepers are in Iraq then from week to week they will find themselves on one side or the other depending on who is killing more of the other side...

This is an "insane" policy...

What we must do is get the heck out over a ***specified*** period of time which may force the Iraqis into trying to figure stuff out politically while concurrently preparing for the human costs of an outright civil war... This part isn't a DoD mission but a State Department mission that will involve relocations, diplomacy with Iraqs neigbors and UN assitence with food, shelter, medical help, etc. to assist refugees...

This is reality... 100 more years of "stay the course" ain't gomma get 'er done, ain't gonna fix anything and ain't gonna make Iraqis safe...

And in the words of Walther Cronkite, "That's the way it is..."

B~