Just what are you using as a monthly expense for cost of war? And I’m quite sure your math is better than you are portraying here…. even if you use $10bil per month… twice the amount of reality for the defense budget costs… Three tril is 25 years in Iraq at $10bil monthly. Or, if you bring it down to *real* figures… 50 years minimal at this aggressive pace of action.

Wanna bring this down to reality? Or are we just playing the billion/trillion name game?

And… if you have the time in your very important (no sarcasm there.. you really *are* one of those attempting to “cure cancer”…)… would you care to play with the defense budget (one of the only legitimate federal mandates to the country) after there is a withdrawal from Iraq, and a US escalation of troops in Afghanistan, intead of a NATO escalation?

Who’s the Bush-appointed General that won’t tell you the same thing ?
What war college study hasn’t said this since 2003?
I wonder what it is you think has been serving as aQ’s #1 recruiting tool for the past 5 years if not the Iraq war. Or what better use those troops could have been put to regarding that whole Taliban in Afghanistan issue, what with that still being the case and the senior aQ leadership still alive today.

Well you can add me to that list. If you say the war has been won for months, rather than since April 2003, then you aren’t talking about combat operations. Hence, WTF does an absence of combat operations count for ?

Instead, since that time, you are talking about stability operations. Now either Michael Yon and Soldier X’s rifle usage were some of those benchmarks for success or they weren’t. They weren’t.

You’ve got political factions trying to gain muscle with the SOFA, the SoI situation and control issues like Kirkuk. Remember, you can say surge, surge, surge all you want, but there’s still 100,000 armed, experienced former insurgents that were getting paid to fight al Qaeda instead of US troops, with the promise of being integrated into the ISF, who the government doesn’t particularly want to pay or integrate. You should be able to guess how that ends up, same as everyone else can.

I don’t know the date that that goes tits up (there is a date proposed, but it’s not like anyone is working to that schedule) but saying it is fixed today doesn’t change the obvious outcome. Either it’s resolved or you are simply delaying a date for the insurgency to resume and civil war to return. If that occurs how have you won any more than you had the day before the insurgency kicked off ?

There’s a reason you’re quoting a reporter saying this and not military leaders.

The war is technically won, we’ve been winning it for months, still hasn’t stopped certain elements from denying the success. I believe that to be Michael from MI’s contention, he can correct me if I’m wrong. Having read through many of M from MI’s comments here and his blog, I felt comfortable enough to make that judgement. Claiming his statement was “idiotic” was uncalled for.

Iraq has improved tremendously, thank our troops, the President and Sec/Def Gates, it doesn’t mean it is time to pull out. Troop reduction levels are still on an incremental basis and I haven’t heard that those plans have changed. Commanders on the ground best know when it’s time to pick up the tempo, that will then go up the chain to make changes in troop strength in Iraq, not to disgruntled members of Congress.

Well what better time is there to end a war than once you have won it ? What alternative scenario are you advocating ?
I wouldn’t have guessed that this would need explanation. What concept could be less complicated than victory in a war entailing the end of that war ? Did victory in Iraq always require permanent deployment in Iraq or is this something new ?

Troop draw-downs are already happening…under the current Administration. And thanks to our successes of the last year +.

We’re still in Japan and Germany, even though victory was won and in the absence of an insurgency.

Being able to keep a permanent base in Iraq would be in our strategic interest; but if it so happens that we are asked to have zero presence there, then so be it.

Regardless, our leaving from Iraq isn’t going to happen overnight at the snap of the fingers, no matter which administration were in power, and no matter how rosy the situation on the ground.

This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.

-President Bush in an address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, United States Capitol, Washington D.C., September 20, 2001.

The guy said some people were idiots for wanting to end a war that has already been won. Well what better time is there to end a war than once you have won it ? What alternative scenario are you advocating ?
I wouldn’t have guessed that this would need explanation. What concept could be less complicated than victory in a war entailing the end of that war ? Did victory in Iraq always require permanent deployment in Iraq or is this something new ?

The late Lt. General William Odom, who was Reagan’s NSA Director, always made the point that the outcome in Iraq would be the same, whether the US stayed 10 weeks or 10 months or 10 years. The forces in play work on God’s time, not on any schedule. If you’ve got a surge and you are getting slaughtered, then you lie low and see how things shake out. The Iraqis demand that we get out by 2011. Then we’ll all see what happens.

Ah yes, the one who “actually thought through failure instead of success and presented that thinking as good military planning”, inspired the coinage, “Odom’s Razor”:

* 1) “Shave away all essential plans for victory to arrive at the quickest defeat possible”
* 2) “Never attribute to military experience, what can adequately be explained away to normal stupidity.”

Larry, staying in Iraq after removing Saddam was the right thing to do. It was the responsible and honorable thing. If you think America’s credibility was harmed by the decision to invade, how much worse our credibility if we left nothing but chaos in our wake? Then we truly would be the heartless, selfish monsters our critics wish to make us out as being. Instead, we are trying to help make Iraq a better place, helping with building schools, mosques, hospitals, restoring infrastructure- much that had been neglected before we even arrived.

And it is deeply tied in to our national security interests. Even the perception of failure, as happened to the Soviets at the Lion’s Den in Afghanistan, enabling Osama bin Laden to propagandize it as a win for jihadi recruitment, would embolden our enemies. bin Laden was convinced that America was a paper tiger due to our apparent retreat from such conflicts as Somalia and Vietnam and our weak response to terror attacks throughout the 90’s. Iraqi oil fields should not fall into the hands of Islamists. Nor should innocent Iraqis be abandoned for slaughter and conversion at the hands of Islamists with “their way or the highway” approach to living under Sharia.

There are larger issues, however. Within the last couple weeks there was an official Bush administration assessment, which concluded that the scope of terrorist planning operations has expanded considerably and that the US is vulnerable, most of all, to biological weapons, followed by “dirty” nuclear devices, and then to explosive nuclear devices.

Yes, we are in a war with Islamic terrorists. Abandoning Iraq today or 5 years ago undermines their efforts….how?

It is unclear how the waging and continuance of the Iraq War has served to protect America from any of the above. The ultimate cost of the Iraq War will be in the neighborhood of $3 trillion, including post war veterans expenses. Even in the post-”victory” phase of operations, we are spending in 4 months in Iraq what we are spending in an entire year of operating all of our intelligence services, the latter of which will provide us with actual protection against the true threats to our national security.

$3 trillion.

I forget now where the $3 trillion figure comes from; I did know it, but forget. Can you refresh me? I know how so many anti-Iraq War critics keep touting that number.

Perhaps it shall have bought us “victory” in Iraq. This remains to be seen. It could have bought us improved intelligence. It could have bought us the solvency of both Social Security and Medicare. Could have bought a heck of a lot.

Uh…yeah, as if we’d be buying more books not bombs, if not for the war costs….which is what percentage of GDP, again?

Why don’t we cut government waste in other areas, and see how much we save? So much bureaucratic waste with unnecessary departments…

Was “victory” worth the price? More importantly, where do we spend our anti-terrorism money in the future?

We need to identify the true threats to our security and allocate our resources in a way which maximizes our protection against those threats.

- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

Here’s the thing: How much was sanctions costing us through the years? How many more years of “looking the other way” and more meaningless resolutions? What is the ultimate cost to the world today and tomorrow, had Saddam and his murderous sons been left in power? How many more soldiers would have died then? Terror attacks?

What we have spent in blood and treasure is an investment. Unfortunately, we can’t know whether or not what we’ve spent thus far has saved more lives and money in the long term or not. We can only moan and complain about where we are today. But it is dishonest to only measure the war by body counts and financial cost without weighing into consideration what those sacrifices and expenses have ultimately gained for us and for the world.

Saddam was a threat. Nothing regarding post-war findings has convinced me that he wasn’t.

-wordsmith/Santa Monica, CA

There are larger issues, however. Within the last couple weeks there was an official Bush administration assessment, which concluded that the scope of terrorist planning operations has expanded considerably and that the US is vulnerable, most of all, to biological weapons, followed by “dirty” nuclear devices, and then to explosive nuclear devices.

It is unclear how the waging and continuance of the Iraq War has served to protect America from any of the above. The ultimate cost of the Iraq War will be in the neighborhood of $3 trillion, including post war veterans expenses. Even in the post-”victory” phase of operations, we are spending in 4 months in Iraq what we are spending in an entire year of operating all of our intelligence services, the latter of which will provide us with actual protection against the true threats to our national security.

$3 trillion. Perhaps it shall have bought us “victory” in Iraq. This remains to be seen. It could have bought us improved intelligence. It could have bought us the solvency of both Social Security and Medicare. Could have bought a heck of a lot.

Was “victory” worth the price? More importantly, where do we spend our anti-terrorism money in the future?

We need to identify the true threats to our security and allocate our resources in a way which maximizes our protection against those threats.

- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

Well, if citing facts is now considered “supremely idiotic”, then I consider myself a proud supreme idiot.