The radical idea from a few of the Democratic Presidential hopefuls is to pull out of Iraq. All the way, completely. Leave the big hole we punched in the sand to whoever wants to rush in and take over. At least we won't have Americans losing their lives every day this way.

Right-wing pundits have attacked this pretty heavily of course. I'm sure they have some funny saying like can't leave the deer in the field with a pack of wolves or something like that. But their main point is it doesn't matter how we got there (we were lied to), how it's been managed since we got there (not very well and certainly more corrupt than Enron), it's our duty to finish the job.

I understand not leaving a power vacuum. We would have no control about who rushed into power, and, most likely, it'll be the faction with the most access to weapons. But a lot of us didn't want to go there in the first place. I think by now a lot of the soldiers serving in Iraq don't want to be there anymore, either. And I'm sure a lot of reservists who have been alerted to possible placement in Iraq aren't very happy about that, either.

The notion that horrible policy should be supported because it's our duty is a bit self-serving for the people who implemented the policy. Especially since the policy (pre-emptive war) has been proven to be horribly wrong. No weapons of mass destruction. No nuclear program. No enriched Uranium. No ties to al-Qaeda. No imminent threat. No reason to do what we did.

Why should we support this? Why should we dismiss all the crap that lead up to this quagmire and say yes to billions of our dollars and thousands of American lives to try to fix this. Try to fix it because, so far, all the billions we've spent haven't really gone very far to fix the problem. It's actually made it worse.

There's no reason to believe all of this effort will bring about a democratic Iraq. Afghanistan, after all of our bombing and fighting, wants to be an Islamic Republic. Which is pretty much what it was before we went in there. And just because Iraqis get to vote, doesn't mean the same thing won't happen there. I mean, if a Democratic society means one person (the President) can send our military into another country and blow big holes in everything for no reason, why would anyone think Democracy is better than anything else? The checks and balances didn't work for us.

The number of dead keeps rising--on both sides. But we are, of course, more concerned with the number of Americans dying. Helicopters going down. Buildings blowing up. Car bombs. Coordinated attacks against big targets. This is every day. And it's not happening just because the media keeps telling us about it. It's not an ugly deluge of negative stories if all of this is happening for real. There's nothing wrong with the filter--especially if it's filtering out the bullshit from Washington. Of course we want to hear if American's keep dying. They're our people. And they were sent in to fight a war that should never have happened.

The arrogance and idiocy of this administration is reason enough to pull out. Yes, it'll make us look bad, but we already look horrible. No other country wants to help us clean up this mess. It's our mess. We went in pretty much alone, and we aren't gonna get help we didn't get before because they feel sorry for us now. And, while millions in our country are out of work, have no health insurance and we're being burdened with the biggest Federal deficits in history, we're digging the hole we blew in the sand even bigger.

Of course, the current administration is not going to pull out of Iraq. They have less than a year to turn this around. To actually show progress and not a deepening conflict we weren't and aren't prepared to fight. If they can't do it, they need to step down from their high horse and face the music.

Sometime, they should be prepared to say they were wrong.

But I guess that's hard when you're on the right.

Matt Worley isn't happy about this war thing at all.