Excuse me Mr. Cheney!

In spite of the cyborg enhancements to his circulatory system Dick Cheney must still not be getting enough blood to his brain or perhaps this explains it.
Cheney warns against early pullout from Iraq

CAMP LEJEUNE, North Carolina (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney warned on Monday that Iraq could become a staging area for large-scale terrorist attacks on the United States if troops are withdrawn too early, as he tried to shore up waning public support for the war.

"Iraq could become a staging area for large-scale terrorist attacks"!! I think it is already Mr Cheney. I know you read briefs from the CIA about as often as Michael Brown checked the cable news to see how things were going in New Orleans but it's pretty common knowledge that Iraq is already a terrorist training ground and that they are practicing on US troops.

Speaking of withdrawal, Tom Engelhardt has a good piece today, Tomgram: Withdrawal Symptoms.

As Rumsfeld confidently told the Armed Services Committee, ``Every single week that goes by, the number of [Iraqi] security forces goes up, the total.'' In a statement from the White House Rose Garden after meeting with his generals, the President made the same point: "The growing size and increasing capability of the Iraqi security forces are helping our coalition address a challenge we have faced since the beginning of the war. And General Casey discussed this with us in the Oval Office… Now, the increasing number of more capable Iraqi troops has allowed us to better hold on to the cities we have taken from the terrorists… We're on the offense. We have a plan to win."

Before Congress, however, Casey painted a rather different picture of the Iraqi national-army-that-isn't. In fact, on a crucial point, his testimony bore little relation to the assessments that either George Bush or Donald Rumsfeld claimed they had heard. Last June, the Pentagon informed Congress that three Iraqi battalions were finally at "Level 1" of preparedness -- that is, "fully trained, equipped, and capable of operating independently" of U.S. forces. On Thursday, Casey lowered this estimate to one battalion (evidently not even one of the previous three), calling it a "step backward." In other words, of the 100-plus battalions in the American-created Iraqi army, only one -- perhaps 1,000 soldiers -- is capable of heading off on its own to fight, out of sight of its American protectors.

Like many of us Tom thinks that withdrawal is inevitable, probably sooner than latter.

Put it all together and it adds up to a tsunami of unsustainable reality. So somebody answer me this question: Based on the evidence, what favor exactly have we been doing the Iraqis these last two disastrous years by occupying their country? I suspect a lot of military people have been asking similar questions as they worry (as their predecessors did in the later Vietnam years) about the future viability of the Army.

Withdrawal from Iraq, one way or another, is now probably unstoppable, no matter how many times generals, administration officials, and politicians may step back or create "withdrawal plans" that are intent on keeping us in Iraq. President Bush continues to speak of how the terrorists will not "break the will" of the American people. But all evidence indicates that support for his war has all but collapsed here in the United States, even increasingly among his own base of support. And it's almost as clear that the military leadership knows the score. The Army high command, after all, never wanted to be in Iraq in the first place and can see not only that the "war" is unwinnable, or even salvageable, but that it threatens the cohesion and future of the Army itself.

And don't forget 2006.