If you are referring to Spain pulling out of the can of worms known as Iraq, it was a joke to begin with. It was only token appeasement Tex. For cripes sakes, they only had about 1500 troops in Iraq. Most high schools have more students than that.
They put their entire portion of their token coalition on two or three aircraft and were audios amigo! You need to face up Tex. It is not looking good in Iraq. The place is a freaking mess.
Yeah that is why I am saying that this country is on the verge of making them look heroic.
Pray tell, does this come for your extensive first hand experience with all that has and is happening in Iraq? Or could this possibly just be your own personal opinion, heavily colored by the fact that very few others seem to agree with you?
Your personal assesment of the situation in Iraq, while of the utmost importance to you, is meaningless to the the remainder of the world.
In fact, not all major cities in the US have a higher crime rate than Iraq!Context, people, context!!
Just remember, journalism isn't there to tell you what's going on, and what's going to happen. Journalism exists to cure boredom. From the POV of the journalist, Iraq is a wonderful source of bad news, nothing more.
If you really wanted to see Iraq in perspective, look at Afghanistan. There are casualties happening there - e.g., Pat Tilman - but Afghanistan is on journalism's back burner because there is more excitement in Iraq. But because our military operations in Afghanistan began a year before those in Iraq, the experience in Afghanistan is a salient bit of data for figuring what to expect in Iraq. Allowing both for significant local differences on the one hand, and for the application of lessons learned in one place being applied to the other - by Americans and by Al Qaeda.
A new government is being established in Iraq; a year or so ago a new government was established in Afghanistan. American forces are still in Afghanistan, and a year from now American forces will still be needed and presumably will still be present in Iraq.
Of course we will have an election in the meantime, and at present the polls are not showing a clear winner. IMHO that reflects journalism's best efforts to levitate the Kerry candidacy - and by November events such as continued improvement in the economy and progress in Iraq toward the situation now existing in Afghanistan will let the air out of that baloon.
Kerry has been on all sides of every issue, and I expect the campaign to force him to clarify his position - and lose support to Nader while Bush's support only solidifies. You can't beat somebody with nobody, and you can't beat an effective sitting president with a hollow 3-term senator who has 75,000 miles on his odometer but is otherwise indistinguishable from a typical Ivy League June grad.