We wouldn’t be having this discussion of how to get out if we’d never got in.

This is so amusing. Now we have the Iraqi goverment saying they are ready to take over, and Bush agreeing. So by the time Obama takes office (IF he does), The war will be over and the troops will already be starting to withdraw. He’ll have nothing to do except quibble over the exact length of the withdraw. Hilarious.

Which is fine by me. I’d love it if all the new president (whichever one) had to deal with is how fast we get our troops out of Iraq.
Sure beats the assertion by Bush that Iraq would be the next president’s problem, or McCain putting it at 2012.
So, if it took the Iraqi leaders telling us /again/ to get the heck out, glad they managed to find the key.

We can’t get out of Iraq. We need it as a staging area for the destruction of Iran.

Which is fine by me.
It’s refreshing to be objectives-based, not personality-based, isn’t it?
Like, I don’t care who delivers the goods …

This is pathetic…..the right claims, jumping up and down, that they finally did it harder and made it work!
This is what they say every time when their policies fail. If we just did it harder, it would work.
OK, righties, I really hope you’re right , because we can start to bring the troops home. But the arrogance of the right after everything they’ve been wrong on is breathtaking.
They said this was over WMDs and they knew where they were.
They said that the oil would pay for it.
They said we would be greeted as liberators.
They said it wouldn’t cost much.
They said it would be over in months.
And now they finally get one right after all this time.
We’re all supposed to be in awe of how people who screw everything up finally got one right.
Wow.

Wow, the bitterness here is just palpable. I wonder if they’re really suggesting that it’s possible to accurately predict the length or cost of ANY war. Let’s see how Obama does, shall we? We’re sure to get attacked on his watch. Oh, I forgot, he’ll just surrender.

I said it was fine, I didn’t care who did it.
You are just waiting, apparently, gleefully for getting attacked on Obama’s watch (which means WE get attacked) because you assume he’ll surrender.
And who, precisely, is being bitter?

truth be told, nobody can predict what iraq would look like without the surge, so this claim that the surge was the right thing to do (as if it was the only thing to do) is preposterous. and there’s still that warmongering group who refuse to admit that invading iraq wsa a mistake in the first place. they’d rather just skip that part and say “what’s done is done, no sense talking about it now.”
just days ago, righties were saying that we can’t leave iraq, because it’s too fragile, but at the same time trying to say that the “surge” worked, because clearly the iraqi army is leading it’s own missions with no help from us, and that the government has met nearly all of it’s goals, and security has been restored. spin, spin, spin people. you’ve spun such a web of deceit that you can’t get yourselves out.
now it seems that the iraqi government is caving to the will of its people and is supporting obama’s position of withdrawal. bush is talking about “time horizons.” mcnugget is the odd man out. let’s see how long it takes for him to flip-flop or wordsmith his way back into the crowd.
because of bush’s bungling of the war, we’ve missed opportunities to unstick ourselves from the mire. now we have the best chance yet… hope we don’t screw this one, too.

Careful Reincarnate, your apoplexy might cause a vein to burst.
Maybe the surge and the improvement had NOTHING to do with each other. Maybe they just happened to occur at EXACTLY THE SAME TIME. Keep dreaming.

Actually, there are two large reasons the surge is working. Neither has anything to do with the increase in our military presence there. The first is that we are paying tribal leaders to keep people in line. The second is that the ethnic cleansing has already taken place. There are no Shia living in Sunni neighborhoods, and vice versa. They have all been driven out or killed. Keep in mind also there are about a million exiles from Iraq as well.

zz, try wrapping your brain around rg’s comment, ’cause rg nailed it. this is well documented, just not much talked about on the fox news and limbaugh stations that you frequent which attribute everything “good” to the dynamic duo of dick and bush.
“apoplexy?” that’s an awfully big word. did you get that from your new-word-everyday calendar? cool.

You guys get all your news from the Daily Kos and various troofer sites. Even the WASHINGTON POST says the surge worked. Now you’ll probably say the post is on Bush’s payroll.

Actually, ZZ, my source was a general from our military, who was testifying in front of a Congressional committee. He said that the surge worked because we are paying the tribal leaders to keep people in line, and because there are no longer mixed neighborhoods. That is – the ethnic cleansing is complete, and there are no longer Sunni in shia neighborhoods and vice versa.
When asked if the added military presence had much to do with it, he said he could not really be sure one way or the other.

sorry to disappoint you once again, i don’t read kos. odd that you would know what to find there though. do you read it?

“So, if it took the Iraqi leaders telling us /again/ to get the heck out, glad they managed to find the key. ”
Unfortunately you guys aren’t reading the whole story here. They want us to leave when they’re army is ready on it’s own. That may take longer than the time frame Obama is laying out and Obama doesn’t sound like he’ll be flexible about it.

they want a “time horizon” but nothing like what obama is proposing. riiiiight.
funny that the talk of “when they’re [sic] army is ready on it’s [sic] own” didn’t come into the conversation until after the white house’s pants-down-reaction to maliki’s endorsement of obama’s basic plan. then the political back-peddling started (after a phone call, to be sure). well i understand your concern. but apparently with all the writing that you do about obama, you haven’t really been listening. he has addressed your concern and your assumption is flat wrong.
according to obama’s op-ed on iraq, it’s clear that he’s setting a plan for the future (unlike an open-ended war campaign – i.e. no plan – proposed by bush/mccain), and he’s planning based upon input from military commanders.

Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.” – obama nyt op-ed

that fits into the withdrawal time frame proposed by obama and endorsed by maliki.

When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded “as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned.” He then continued: “US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.” – speigel online (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,566841,00.html)

back to the op-ed:

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected.

back to speigel, maliki remarks on the problems with the bush/mccain plan:

But then, apparently referring to Republican candidate John McCain’s more open-ended Iraq policy, Maliki said: “Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems.”

…

“So far the Americans have had trouble agreeing to a concrete timetable for withdrawal, because they feel it would appear tantamount to an admission of defeat,” Maliki told SPIEGEL. “But that isn’t the case at all. If we come to an agreement, it is not evidence of a defeat, but of a victory, of a severe blow we have inflicted on al-Qaida and the militias.”

and the rug has been pulled from under mccain’s feet.

they want a “time horizon” but nothing like what obama is proposing. riiiiight.
funny that the talk of “when they’re [sic] army is ready on it’s [sic] own” didn’t come into the conversation until after the white house’s pants-down-reaction to maliki’s endorsement of obama’s basic plan. then the political back-peddling started (after a phone call, to be sure). well i understand your concern. but apparently with all the writing that you do about obama, you haven’t really been listening. he has addressed your concern and your assumption is flat wrong.
according to obama’s op-ed on iraq, it’s clear that he’s setting a plan for the future (unlike an open-ended war campaign – i.e. no plan – proposed by bush/mccain), and he’s planning based upon input from military commanders.

Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.” – obama nyt op-ed

that fits into the withdrawal time frame proposed by obama and endorsed by maliki.

When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded “as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned.” He then continued: “US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.” – speigel online

back to the op-ed:

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected.

back to speigel, maliki remarks on the problems with the bush/mccain plan:

But then, apparently referring to Republican candidate John McCain’s more open-ended Iraq policy, Maliki said: “Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems.”

…

“So far the Americans have had trouble agreeing to a concrete timetable for withdrawal, because they feel it would appear tantamount to an admission of defeat,” Maliki told SPIEGEL. “But that isn’t the case at all. If we come to an agreement, it is not evidence of a defeat, but of a victory, of a severe blow we have inflicted on al-Qaida and the militias.”

and the rug has been pulled from under mccain’s feet.