Reply #5: of course there's the profit

[bigtree]

but the argument from Bush, his generals, and the rest of his cabal is that our soldiers are in Iraq to give the new regime 'room' to pass these two initiatives on oil and reconciliation. The entire notion is made completely absurd now that we have 160,00 troops in place and, according to Bush, waiting for the Iraqis to get on with those two little things they promised. The administration is staking the 'success' of their 'surge' on the prospect that Iraq will do these things and their own puppet regime is balking. But it's not as if those two measures would do anything at all to stop the violent, resistant struggle for power. So, in effect, our troops are still fighting and dying for some dubious political goal that the new regime doesn't even share.

Whatever profit the Bushies got out of Iraq is not what's keeping republicans and Bush from withdrawing. It's the prospect that they'll have to admit their venture was a failure for the very reasons they used to take us there and keep our troops bogged down there. If there's one thing Bush and his republicans are more concerned with than money, it's their political ego. And, their lies about Iraq have caught up with them. No more bluffing that more troops would produce anything Bush could call a 'success' out of his fiasco. The escalation is complete and all he and his generals have done is dig us even deeper into the muck.

Our troops are dying, waiting for the Iraqis to get on with their politics. But, we have absolutely no business in dictating to them what they should do politically. Especially not at the point of the weapons of our escalated occupation force.