won't recognized until we fully withdraw. And that tally will be include acceptance of a total strategic defeat in Iraq. Namely, we basically created a new anti-American state whose closest ally is Iran. What a total cock up. It is clear that Wolfowitz and the other neocons will want to delay that recognition far into the future to avoid exposure to any sentient being on the planet as total fools. That is the first reason for there insane suggestion. The other, of course, is if the war can be extended then it will become Obama's war so then the defeat could be blamed on him. It is so critical for Obama to continue the withdrawal. Some way I think he will continue to do the right thing here.

Anyone interested in this issue should read Ryan Crocker's (someone with on the ground experience) piece and not bother with this joke Walt (a attention starved blogger who sometimes borders on idiotic).

In the glowing reports of electricity and water infrastructure it's compared to what? I doubt pre-war levels but levels we could measure after our entry, after shock and awe.

But, this is obviously flawed. Let's imagine that they somehow had service figures prior to our invasion. Then those figures would be AFTER desert storm, when we admittedly bombed out their infrastructure, then we prevented them from getting replacement parts in for twelve years under our embargo.

So, the deception continues. I have Iraqi friends who had extensive family in Baghdad, they had just prior to Shock and Awe full electricity and water. We know they don't enjoy at today.

My father in law was working in Iraq on their sanitation system, this is after the insurgency made them disband their oil field services crew. He, being a pump expert made snide remarks about the way they'd patched together the sewage plants in Basra where he was working. He never allowed that we had bombed these facilities, and they did indeed have to patch these facilities back together precisely because of our embargo. Like so many Likudist, Americans are uncomfortable accepting accountability for our own sins.

The comparison to Iraq is absurd. First, at the end of the Korean war, US troops were stationed amid a civilian population that supported their presence -- those anti-American Koreans were all in the North. In Iraq, there is an intense hatred of Americans among the Arabs -- perhaps we could redeploy are troops in Kurdistan, but any place else they would invite continuous target practice. Any government in Baghdad would be under continuous pressure to kick out the Americans. Just hunkering down in our fortress bases and the American embassy like Crusader fortresses in hostile Arab land does not sound like a viable strategy.

These guys know that if we pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, the war they wish to inspire with Iran will be that much harder to pull off. These guys are pushing for regional conflict, conflict that becomes so pervasive in the region that it allows Israel the ability to do the things in the fog of war that they could never do otherwise; wholesale bombing of Lebanon (much worse than the pointless, failed, summer war) bombing of Syria, and the final ethnic cleansing of the west bank and east Jerusalem.

In order to do any of this, there must be hundreds of thousands of US soldiers in the region. Thus, the Iraq war. If we were ever stupid enough to get pulled into conflict with Iran, it would be the neoconservative wet dream come true; the US and Israel against the entire middle east.

Wolfowitz is, in his mind, only BEGINNING to inspire death, destruction, and US and Israeli dominance in the middle east. Don't let this monster keep us in Iraq so that he can help pull us into Iran as well.

I understand that the US went into Iraq on faulty or manufactured evidence. That we had no plans for securing and rebuilding the country after we quickly defeated Saddam, destroyed Iraq's infrastructure, plunged the country into chaos, and pissed off tens of millions of Iraqis... but to call Iraq a failure is premature.

Yes, it took way too long to get even to where it is today and took too many American and Iraqi lives. But, if Iraq is able to maintain its democracy, control internal conflicts, and fight terrorism, then how is that a failure? I'm not saying it wasn't costly and needless, but in five, ten, or thirty years, a stable, productive, Saddam-free Iraq is not a failure. No WMDs were found, is that the grounds for calling it a failure? For many years we had no clear plan and were heading into another Vietnam, is that grounds for calling it a failure? No.

The success or failure of Iraq has yet to be seen. Truthfully, it will be decades before the call can be made. Was Vietnam a failure? Yes, because the north eventually prevailed, so all the lives lost and money spent was ultimately for nothing. I do not mean to be pragmatic about the issue, but, in the end, if Iraq becomes a stable country and a partially-reasonable ally, though the cost is still egregious and the initial justification erroneous, it still would be hard to call it an out-right failure.

I wonder what Prof Walt thinks about Tony Blair, given his current feelings about the worthiness of the invasion of Iraq and former President Bush.

I'm not sure if Wolfowitz still feeling entitled to opine on anything related to the Iraq War is any worse than segments of the media continually granting him a pulpit.

It's simply baffling - all the neocons and warmongers, et.al., got a decision SO wrong, then conducted a misguided war effort SO poorly and arrogantly, and they haven't been marginalized yet. It's just another sign yet that political order is clearly not a meritocracy in this country.

(sorry, AULBRANDT, there's no way to claim any sort of victory, morally or politically, EVER in the case of Iraq and our role in it. I would steadfastly submit that the lack of WMD is, in fact, cause enough to label the war a failure - but the scores of lost lives there, the drain on our economy here, and the very uncertain future in Iraq still are only more ammunition for an easy argument against yours.)

At least Rumsfeld has the good sense (or something) to keep out of the limelight.

The above is what I firmly believe Paul Wolfowitz is. As long as anyone on either side of the political spectrum are foolish enough to listen to him, the American governing class will have nobody but themselves to blame for what will happen in the future.

The CBO shows by the numbers it has on the cost of the whole Iraqi operation that it is half of what the 2010 budget deficit alone will be.

In other words, the total cost of the war over the past 8 years or so does not even equal the cost of the stimulus passed by the Obama Congress last year.

But hey, the unemployment problem has been fixed and the economy is on the upswing. Oh wait...

Are you talking about the healthcare plan or the Iraq war?

There's a lot of liberty taken in this column. It makes me wonder how much else is being bent to support an argument.

Iraq is split about 50-50 between those who are glad we are leaving and those who think we need to stay longer.

Saddam wanted us to believe he had WMD because he thought it would be a deterrent. As far as a grand-scheme to transform the Middle East, it is more likely that the intent was to keep the target in Muslim land so that al-Qaeda will fall into the trap of other Islamic radicals through the centuries -- killing other Muslims until the population will not tolerate them anymore. And it worked in Iraq, and is on the way to playing out the same way in Afghanistan.

I think Patraeus is right when he says the Taliban are defeated. Getting good governance and stamping out drug gangs will be more difficult.