Why still agonize about this? The Maliki government will fall soon, certainly well before the 2008 election. Then it will be obvious, even to the most obtuse Bushites, that there's no point to staying in Iraq. Except in "Kurdistan". And no matter what anybody says, the US will stay in "Kurdistan"--both for oil and because the Kurds want us to.

It's also interesting that "Guest Started" is horrified at a draft--but fine with the current situation--where the folks on the bottom of the economic pile do the fighting---and the dying.