Kerry is not the world's most effective messenger, but his point was a good one: we need a plan to bring this to a close. Whatever your views on the wisdom of starting this war, the fact is, we're there now, and we need to be thinking and talking about how we're going to bring this to a close and get out of there.

Immediate withdrawal would be insane; even if we could manage to pull it off without taking catastrophic casualties ourselves in the process, it would leave a power vaccuum, which would quickly evolve into a large-scale civil war that would make the current death rates appear insignificant. And that civil war would not be contained within Iraq's borders. It's all well and good to talk about just picking up our toys and going home, but it just isn't realistic.

We need a plan; if Kerry's isn't the right one, let's come up with a better alternative. The problem now is that we really don't seem to have a plan for bringing this to a close, and all we hear from the Administration is "we'll stay until the job is done". Their justification for not giving any more details seems to be that this would "embolden the insurgency," and allow them to "wait us out". But the insurgency is already emboldened, and they fully intend to still be there when we're gone, whether that's this year, next year, or ten years from now. That's a pretty lame excuse for not saying how we're going to end this thing.