Exit Sesame!

Click here: Levin at Brookings: Redeploy/Withdraw

Two fantasies: One, that a President who has been 100% incompetent up till now will somehow being able to stuff the tiger back into the bag if he just has the right info and advisers. He's the least equipped person in the world to fix this catastrophe. It would be like asking Hitler to fix the Holocaust.

Two: That the Iraqi gov't is "fiddling" and depending too much on us and if we show it it can't do that that it will get down to brass tacks and bidness and rule properly. The "gov't" is a Potemkin tissue created by us. When we stop propping it up the vendetta-crazed Arabs we have unleashed will rip each other even more bloodily than they already are in order to settle who runs this godforsaken patch of sand and its oil. Thing about that is, Sunni nations like Syria & Saudi Arabia will not stand idly by while Sadr's Shiites, aided by Iran, flay the Sunnis. At that point you'll not just have the civil war you have now, you'll have a full-fledged melee involving the whole Middle East. Nice work, Decider in Chief!