Iraq: When is the US getting out?

The investment in permanent military bases is massive. I can't quote a$ figure in what has been directly spent by the US Government on these bases, but they are like small US cities, with facilities to match. Similarly re. the new US Embassy in Baghdad: this covers an area larger than the Vatican. We are not about to quit Iraq, leaving these multi $10s of billion facilities to the insurgents. We are staying there, probably permanently. I feel that the length of the war is directly related to the length of the occupation: without the US military occupation as a focal point for all the insurgent groups, they would instead turn increasingly on each other.. with a period of utter chaos (as if what is happening now isn' t just that).. and out the power vacuum would rise a Saddam Hussein-like strongarm (dictator)... and we would all be back to square one. No democracy for Iraq, but at least relative stability.

I wish the US government and media had taken the anti-war movement in 2002 and early 2003 seriously. Their dire predictions were spot on: Everything that they were warning against has taken place, and is taking place as we write....and even worse. The endless parade of Bush Administration officials, defense analysts, high ranking military personnel and (neo)conservative commentators who had a perpetual free lunch with the mainstream US media in the build-up to the war were absolutely pathetic. They got everything wrong; totally and utterly, 100% wrong. Their analyses were pie-in-the-sky fantasies of Lewis Carroll proportions that any 16 year old with half a brain, and a bit of a handle on human nature, could have seen through.....

There is no answer to this conundrum, when all parties are paranoid of being seen as losing. Nobody in power in D.C. is going to be looking for a real answer in the near future. The recent switch-over of power in Congress from GOP to Democrat will tell all. My take is that the GOP will take full advantage of what will be the Congressional Democrats' utter inability to deal with Iraq effectively. The GOP don't/didnt have the will, and the Dems do not have the spine. Sure they will pretend to make it appear as if they are trying to take some responsibility.... and people will be taken in...

The only way this nightmare will end... is when the (largely unrepresented) US public gets aware enough, and so angry with the continuing astronomical waste of taxpayer funds, and human life, that they take matters into their own hands.