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I totally agree with your comment. It is easy to say "pray for the family and loved ones" but that is no consolation to us who have brothers, sisters, husbands, wives fighting in Iraq. My heart dies everyday when I read the press releases from MNF (Multinational Forces) saying that we have lost more brave Americans in this conflict. I have supported President Bush all along but now I want our boys and girls back home. This situation in Iraq will never improve. Thse people have been fighting with each other since the advent of civilization in the Mesopotamia. If they want a Shiite theocracy, so be it. Let the Shiite run over all the Sunnis who are the real troublemakers here and bring our boys back now. President Bush is sinking very quickly in the latest polls and it is because we all are having Iraqi fatigue and the best way to deal with it is to bring back our heroes and use them to protect our borders...honestly, I don't give a rat's ass what happens to Iraq, let their own protect each other.

You might be interested to know that recruits of the Kurdish Peshmerga will form a brigade in the regular Iraqi Army. 32,000 men.

Your loved one is fighting for a noble cause that will be ultimately successful. This success will happen only because ofthe sacrifices made by our Armed Forces and the people of Free Iraq.

This situation in Iraq will never improve. Thse people have been fighting with each other since the advent of civilization in the Mesopotamia. If they want a Shiite theocracy, so be it. Let the Shiite run over all the Sunnis who are the real troublemakers here and bring our boys back now. President Bush is sinking very quickly in the latest polls and it is because we all are having Iraqi fatigue and the best way to deal with it is to bring back our heroes and use them to protect our borders...honestly, I don't give a rat's ass what happens to Iraq, let their own protect each other.

Actually, conditions are pretty stable in Kurdish North and Shi'ite South. It's only that the Sunni Triangle is giving us constant trouble.

It may be tough now but we have to eliminate terrorists in Iraq now. Or we will be back there a couple years later. This is not Vietnam. The Terrorists will not stop just because they won Iraq. Their goal is to establish a global caliphate eliminating Israel and the United States along with her Western Allies.

That's why we must stay the course and we shall not falter. So let's support the troops.

Hoo-yah!

I agree with some of your comments, especially the one about family members in the service. I have one too. I have a different take about pulling out however.

All wars end. In one year, two years, 100 or more. The Shiites in the south of Iraq have experienced one war and occupation after another for 1400 years, being invaded by powers from the North (The Ottoman Turks), the West (The Syrians, Judeans, the Brits, Americans), the South (The old powers of the Gulf), and the East (The Persians). If you read your history or the Bible people of the Old Testament (the current Jewish enemies of jihadists) once ruled the land between the Mediteranean and the Tigris. The Kurds in the north have had a similar period of conquests and occupations. It is amazing to me that the Iraqi Shiites and Kurds have proven to be so resilient in maintaining their ethnic identity in the face of such odds, much like the Israelites have done for a much longer time. I would note that both Abraham & Isaac from the Bible are buried near the city of Najif.

I relate the above for background as a luke-warm supporter of the 2nd Iraq war. Being a pragmatist I did not agree at all to get into a second war with Sadam before it started, however, once it started it becomes necessary to win it. I do not wish to have a repeat of the Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon managed war in Vietnam. We lost our credibility in the first Gulf war when we failed to protect the Kurds and the Shiites from Sadam's wrath. The Kurds finally woke up after we initiated the No-Fly zone in the North, decided to put aside their internal differences and fight together to hold off the armies of Sadam. The Kurd have advantages the Shiites did not have back in 1991 and beyond. First they only had two competing factions, good intelligence, and they have arguably the best and boldest fighting group in the region, not withstanding a lack of sophisticated equipment, outside of Israel and Turkey. The Shiites have many factions and no organized militia for the region. The Sunni tribes in Iraq, while generally causing mayhem from some factions, will eventually be overwhelmed by the Kurds and Shiites for control of the country. The payback for the Sunni dominated groups for slaughtering 1,000s of Kurds and Shiites will be brutal, much more so when the coalition troops finally depart. It may hurt some to say it but I wish the Kurds and Shiites do well in purging the Sunni and terrorist factions by what ever means necessary. You can imagine what the reaction would be like here at home if some jihadist group manage to kill more than a million people in the USA, like Sadam & his thugs have done in Iraq. The region south of Basra is very anti-Iran, having been divested by the Iraq/Iran war. Basra itself is a basket case, now controlled by Mullahs who have brought in an Iraq mini-version of the religious police. The highways between Basra and Bagdad are a goldmine for kidnappers, thieves and jihadists looking to create mayhem. Basra is a complicated case however, and other bloggers, including the late Steven Vincent, who was the journalist recently murdered in Iraq, have noted that the corrupt Mullahs' reign of Taliban-lite in Basra may not last. However, as Steven relates at his blog, the status of women in Iraq is no better than it was before Sadam was dispatched, and may be worse. In a story he relates about an Arab man in a cafe who was watching some scantily clad ladies on a TV screen, and happened to glance toward Steve and then make an ugly stare at the woman who was Steve's translater, as if she did not have a right to exist in that place while he was having his jollies at the bar. See Steve's blog In the Red Zone for more gripping story tales. His tale of a US Captain and his conversion with his Iraqi female interpretor is fascinating to say the least. It shows particularly well how multi-culturalism has crept into our own military, as it has been doing for a long time now.

I am deeply saddened by the loss of our soldiers in Iraq this week. I live near Camp Pendleton in California, and I know some officers from the base. I can tell you that the tempo the Marines are being asked to keep up, being deployed again and again for long periods of time is a serious problem. We can not keep this tempo up for much longer without hollowing out the force. The military will tell you for public consumption that we should not bring back the draft. If you talk privately to many in the military, including my own brother, they relate a different story, where many support bringing back the draft. They deeply resent the MSM's constant bashing of the troops, repeating similar story lines about Southeast Asia a generation ago. Armchair generals from both sides of the aisle in Congress do not impress them either. They would like to see some of those college educated, 2nd generation leftist yuppies put some boots on, put them on patrol in a hot spot in the Sunni Triangle, to see if their pants are still dry when they meet up with a band of thugs with AK-47's.

When do we pull out of Iraq. When we win, by whatever means necessary. I do not give a whit about any border with Iraq. If there a terrorist camps and transit points for jahadists in Syria as gateways to Iraq take them out, pure and simple. President Bush should keep his pledge, to hunt down the terrorists wherever they are, and any state that gives them safe harbor is fair game, including Syria and Iran.

God Bless Our Troops and Steven Vincent, true heroes of America

And then what? Have you considered the possibility that many of our "boys and girls" would even want to come home? What if they just want to stay over there and finish their job? What if they don't want to have to go back over there in a few years, have their children or other young people have to go back and finish the job, or have to fight these lunatics on our soil?

Haven't you been reading what several have been saying on here about Vietnam, or what happened after the troops were forced to leave? Many of them felt that there was "unfinished" business! Many of them were sad and bitter, because they were forced to abandon the fight when victory was at hand!

Do you ever wonder why there are actually a number of Vietnam vets over there now, helping to fight along with the younger ones? And of those that aren't, many are back here supporting those that are, so they won't have to face the crap that they had to face! (I've been reading all about that, right in the "VFW" magazine, especially!)

I say, lets let them stay, and get the job done! Then they can come home, and come home to the honor and appreciation of most of their fellow Americans, and with pride in the victory they can obtain, and the respect they, and their fallen comrades deserve, ok?

On an added note, what about our allies who are with us still; and there are still quite a number of them? Have you, and others who think we should just pull out, actually thought about them? If we were to pull out, we would be leaving those still-loyal allies out there swinging in the wind! They depend on us, and we on them! They would begin to say that we just can't hack it! They would begin to think we are cowardly, and can't be relied on!

And then there are the Iraqi people themselves. If we were to just "pull out" our forces, how would they, the Afghans, or others, ever trust us again? A lot of them wanted us and some allies to come in. Oh sure they couldn't just say so! But they reportedly did! Should we just up and desert them? I should say not! Just think of that! We wouldn't be able to hold our heads up among them and our allies for a long, long time!

Our armed forces would not be able to hold their heads up either! And all the hard work they did, the victories they won (with much suffering in many cases), could be in peril, if not reversed! Then, their enemies could surely overcome them. Also, they could come over here, and take over us. They wouldn't be too afraid of us, either. Look what happened in Spain! Just think of all this, and then tell me again that we should just "pull out our boys and girls" and bring them home now!