We can't win, but you're staying anyways.

"If you mean by 'military victory,' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," - Henry Kissinger, 11/19/06

Hmmmm...Let me think now...Wasn't that the reason Poppy Bush didn't march into Baghdad in 1991?

I think for us to get American military personnel involved in a civil war inside Iraq would literally be a quagmire. Once we got to Baghdad, what would we do? Who would we put in power? What kind of government would we have? Would it be a Sunni government, a Shia government, a Kurdish government? Would it be secular along the lines of the Ba’ath Party? Would it be fundamentalist Islamic? I do not think the United States wants to have U.S. military forces accept casualties and accept the responsibility of trying to govern Iraq. I think it makes no sense at all. - Dick Cheney, 4/7/91

We knew in 1991 what would happen if US forces toppled Saddam Hussein. The wargaming of an invasion of Iraq in 1999 showed that what we see in Iraq now was the likely outcome even with far larger numbers of troops than what we went into Iraq with in 2003.

Hank went on to further state that, "...he would have preferred a post-invasion policy that installed a strong Iraqi leader from the military or some other institution and deferred the development of democracy until later. "If we had done that right away, that might have been the best way to proceed,". But isn't that what was in place prior to Chimpy and Co's invasion of Iraq? Why don't we just dust off Saddam and re-install him as the leader of Iraq? It wouldn't be the first time a US administration has propped him up.

But think, what a horrible thing to say to our soldiers in Iraq. "There's no way to win militarily, but we're going to leave you in harm's way anyways." What a horrible betrayal of the trust our troops have that their sacrifices won't be in vain.

And, while there are few similarites to Viet Nam militarily, it is in the political arena that the similarities are most striking. Just as Lyndon Johnson advocated a "stay the course" policy, I won't dignify it with the term "strategy", so too does this President advocate staying the course, with no real strategy apparent. Just as in Viet Nam, it is the politicians who are driving the policy, not the generals on the ground. Just as in Viet Nam, our troops will be left in harm's way until the politicians have decided that they have saved enough face. How can Bush, Cheney, or anyone else in this failed administration, ask any of our soldiers to be the last one to die for a mistake?

As more and more neo-con's jump ship on the policy in Iraq, which they pushed for...Despite the repudiation of the Administration policy in Iraq on November 7th, Chimpy and Co seem to have little interest in making any changes to policy in Iraq. Their grip on the reality of the situation in Iraq is tenuous at best, and their policy is still "Stay the course...". So the profligate spending of American blood and treasure will continue unabated until this Administration leaves office. Then, the real work will begin...Cleaning up the mess they have left behind.