Umm, a couple of Texans?

"We can't solve their problems for them, even though we may have created many of them."

 May have?  I beg your pardon!  There couldn't be the slightest doubt that the problems in Iraq are a result of our invasion.  Before that invasion Iraq had an iron fisted dictator, who kept the various factions quiet thru brute force.  Iran wasn't allowed in.  The people led just about the most modern lives in that area of the world, were well educated and reasonably well fed.  They could live without fear of being killed if they appeared in public.  Today, as a direct result of our invasion, none of that is the case.  We created the problem, and unfortunately, have absolutely no possible way to solve the problem.  The only positive thing we can do is pull out, pay reparations, and cultivate the new government.

Hoppy in Sacramento

Since the problem devolves into containment of the Iranians under all three scenarios, wouldn't the most sensible and sustainable policy be Krugman's? At least withdrawal allows us to begin to rebuild the forces necessry to contain a certain-to-be-strengthened Iran starting now, not ten years in the future. Zinni's and Baker's solutions are predicated on not making a particular party look weak, stupid and incompetent and this nation has already paid for too many checks which that party has cashed. The time to leave is NOW!

However, the Iraqis are responsible for their own behavior.

No, that's not the way it works. You don't knock out all forms of infrastructure and social control and expect people to act rationally.

That's like saying that those responsible for the trampling deaths at The Station nightclub fire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire) in Rhode Island were the people stampeding for their lives, and not, say, the person who lit the fire.

We are in exactly the awful situation that half of the world warned us we would be in if we invaded Iraq. These are hard times and difficult choices, but for Greenbaum it's simple: Iraqis, hundreds of thousands of whom have been killed as a result of our idiotic adventure, are acting out. They're just immature, and well, what can you do when "Arabs" choose to act like little kids. Little kids that have just had their playroom deprived of water and electicity and then cluster bombed. If they would just grow up.

This all starting to sound very familiar, Mr. Greenbaum. It seems that America has been bestowed the gift of our own (super-sized) Gaza Strip, courtesy of the oilmen in the White House, the military-industrial complex, the neocons, a spineless congress, and deluded Zionists like Greenbaum who just dig Israel (and now the US) deeper and deeper into an untenable situation.

Greenbaum, if you have nothing to add to the national conversation but excuses then please stay out of it.

Matthew P. Emmons

Here's the truly sad part. If there's someone who should know what he's talking about it's General Zinni. And yet he offers not the slightest piece of evidence that his suggestion of increasing the number of troops temporarily will have any impact
(besides getting more GIs killed).

The Marines have written off al Anbar, saying the insurgents cannot be militarily defeated.
Funny this didn't kick up more of a storm. If that's not raising the white flag, what is?

So there you have it: with 150K troops the US military admits defeat.
Now Zinni wants you to believe that a temporary increase to 170 or even 200 would mean victory.

Sorry, General, I don't buy that crap. You only seem to confirm Seymour Hersch's judgment that the US military has never been led by weaker brains than now.

Well I can see that the Bushies of the Left are out in force. Thinking and facts are out and ideology and fantasy is out. Actually very few told us not to invade Iraq. If anything the general view was we should have let the inspectors finish their work in Iraq while we finished it in Afghanistan.

Once those two tasks were over then we should have focused our attention on getting rid of Saddem. The forces called for to to do the job were were far larger than those actually sent to Iraq. When dealing with insurgencies large forces are required.

In failing to keep order and protect the Shities from the Sunni insurgents the United States contributed to chaos in Iraq.

However these huge numbers used what evidence is there that the United States as opposed to Iraqis have done most of the killings. Emmons I know it might tax your powers of intellect but it was not necessary for Sunnis to blow up Shiia mosques, or do you think that was necessitated by the absence of Saddem? Do you think the drilling the heads of Sunni Iraqis by Shites is also America's fault because we just can't expect Arabs to coontrol themselves.

Emmons I know you see yourself as some sort of morally superior being. What you are is George Bush with less facts.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

The Lancet's latest report (Over 600K dead
one third of them killed by Americans.)

Another way of looking at the Baker Option 3 would be: the US lacks the power to end the civil war or stabilize the country. But as long as a sufficient US force remains in Iraq, the militias (Sunni and Shiite) lack the power to topple the government. Eventually, the civil war in Iraq will exhaust itself, though it may take years. If we pull our troops out now, we will have no influence over what type of regime takes power at the end of that civil war. If we maintain a sufficient force in Iraq, we retain influence over the character of the final regime. But it will be necessary to come to an agreement with Syria and Iran on that regime's character and foreign-policy alignment, because no regime will survive long if Syria and Iran oppose it.

So the solution is to reduce our forces to a level minimally sufficient to forestall a collapse of the government in Baghdad and to protect our friends (the Kurds) and interests (the oil), and then let the civil war burn itself out, while negotiating with Iran and Syria both to shorten the civil war (to the extent they are able to help on that front) and to reach agreement on the ultimate shape of the Iraqi government.

This is a strategy which entails the deaths of unknown further numbers of US troops and an open-ended commitment to staying in Iraq; and it accepts as a foregone conclusion that the dream of a democratic pro-American Iraq is dead. But it could reduce the monetary cost of the occupation, and also reduce the cost in lives, as US forces could be redeployed to protect only US interests. It's a cynical strategy comparable to the one the US pursued in South Vietnam in the early '70s; but Iraq is not South Vietnam and Iran is not North Vietnam, and this scenario could conceivably end up with better US-Iran relations and a moderately stable, somewhat theocratic, federalized Iraqi government that accomodates American interests in much the frustrating but better-than-nothing way that, say, Pakistan does.

On the other hand, it might be a terrible idea, and maybe we'd be better off bugging out and letting the place sort itself for 20 years or so, a la Vietnam.

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone

Okay. If the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam until 1980 or 1985, or what the heck, 2006, would it have made any appreciable difference, except in more dead bodies, dead children, dead soldiers and sheer destruction? Despite being a crappy carpenter I do know that it takes a long time to cut through a piece of plywood with a hammer.

I think the conceptual question of "what can we do to stabilize Iraq so they like us?" is sort of a foregone conclusion. Apparently, most Iraqis would prefer us to leave. The Iraqi people will decide whether they "like us" or not. You can't force people to like you. Willy Loman wanted to be well-liked.

I think the conceptual question of "what can we do to stabilize Iraq so they are not a threat to us?" is also a foregone conclusion. Iraq was never a threat to the US. And today, Iraq most definitely has no capacity to do anything to hurt the US. The poor country's entire infrastructure is in rubble. So why are we even there?

This reminds me of the drunk guy at the party, you know, the last one to leave. He gets all mad and starts breaking things and knocking things over and falling down on top of the cat. So the host politely asks him to leave. And the drunk guy sort of sobers up in guilt and remorse and offers to help pick up all the things he's broken, and the host says, "No. That's all right, we'll take care of it. Just leave." And the drunk guy says, "No. I want to help you clean up. Please let me." And the host says, "No. The best thing you can do to help is just to leave."

Mr. Sam Thornton,

I think your very legitimate question answers itself. So long as the ongoing military occupation and the chance of installation of a puppet government offers Mr. Bush the prospect of an oil-rich client state in the heart of the Mid East, with permanent U.S. military bases in it, Mr. Bush has no incentive to do anything other than what he is doing at present. This is why Mr. Gates today said the U.S. will be in Iraq for "years." The plan, it seems, is to simply stay in Iraq for years, no matter what happens. The prize for staying the course, so to speak, is an oil-rich client state and permanent U.S. military bases in the heart of the petroleum fields of Arabia. That, to Mr. Bush's eyes, is a very worthy and valuable prize.

I think you are right. There will be no withdrawal from Iraq because the plan was always for there to be no withdrawal once the justification was established to enter and occupy. Mr. Bush is fighting a war of attrition with both the American people and the Iraqi people. His plan is wear both of us peoples down for so long that we just give up resisting. Then he gets exactly what he and his backers want. Checkmate.

Thanks for the comment.

I may appear cynical, but what are military causalties compared to civilian sufferings?

Directly and indirectly.
(Not to mention them who died before the invasion.)

Evidence is hard to get. Particularly with respect to deaths due to air missions.

America's standing in the world increased immeasureably once we quit devastating three Southeast Asian countries in 1975 -- in spite of Henry Kissinger's hysterical warnings to the contrary. Others besides our oldest living war criminal also spent decades (from 1954 to 1975) warning America that our "standing" in the world would plummet if we started acting responsibly and left the Vietnamese (and Cambodians and Laotians) to live as they wished. Such persons got it precisely backwards.

In a similar way, those who say that America cannot "egotistically" stop doing in Iraq what it "egotistically" started doing there four years ago (if not a decade earlier) have a strangely flexible notion of what "egotism" means. America can, of course, continue "altruistically" or "selflessly" bankrupting itself and bleeding its army dry for fear of what people will think of us for not acting stupidly any more, but I'd rather live with the sting of rude reproach than the unsustainable cost of trying to avoid it. People uninvolved in paying the costs of sustained stupidity can think what they want.

Iraq, like Vietnam, will do much better without America than with us. Four years of excruciating empirical evidence have proven the truth of our bloody, bungling incompetence beyond the shadow of a doubt. With us for friends to "help," the Iraqis need no other enemies to harm them. We've done enough damage to those poor people. We need to stop. Now.

 Mr. Bush is fighting a war of attrition with both the American people and the Iraqi people. His plan is wear both of us peoples down for so long that we just give up resisting

The problem with this is that  'wearing down' americans means that our sons and daughters are dying in the dessert...so this will NOT fly. Americans will have to protest and bring home our sons and daughters, just like we protested until Nixon ended the war.

The oil fields should then be claimed as governmental controlled oil with NO oil profits to the oil industry. They forfeit all profits to those lives in Arlington and their families!!!

Less than an hour to go before the report is released. Just for the record, here is my view before downloading it.

There will be no timetable for withdrawal, no coherent exit strategy and no coherent strategy for victory. Instead the aim will be to assist the majority of Democrats to shift from a defeatist orientation while maintaining maximum obscurity in US declaratory policy.

Declaratory policy needs to threaten the Sunnis with "unleashing the Shia", threaten the Shia with prospects of the US pulling out if they don't accommodate the Sunnis, and sustain the illusion that Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank is a blow against Iran and not a victory for the Palestinians.

Most of all it has to marginalize the consensus emerging that the Middle East should be left to stagnate under tyranny and smooth the way for "realists" to accept the new reality that not only Iraq, but also Palestine, Lebanon and soon Egypt and the rest of the region will be governed by regimes acceptable to the people of those countries and consequently highly unacceptable to what "realists" previously tried to maintain by propping up the tyrannies.

Consequently it has to be completely incoherent and just leave the "opinion leaders" with the feeling that they had better start writing op-eds about something else instead of imagining that either they or Iraq's neighbours have a say in how Iraq will be governed.

Following the report, my expectation is that popular nostrums such as splitting Iraq into 3, installing a dictator or abandoning Iraq to be torn apart in civil war and regional war will fade from the mainstream discourse as people realize that there is now an accepted bipartisan consensus that none of these proposals are remotely plausible as US policies, even though there is no clarity as to just what the new bipartisan policy actually implies.

I also expect that there will soon be quite rapid movement on establishing a Palestinian State based on the 1967 boundaries with opposition to this thoroughly marginalized and support for it bipartisan.

I'm noting this now so I can be clear about what I got wrong if things head off in some other direction.

PS "Damned if we do, damned if we don't" is a good summary of the bewildered helplessness that can be expected from many others posting here so confidently about how its all Bush's fault. If you actually had an alternative policy that amounted to more than "blame Bush" you would have presented it by now. The report will help you internalize the fact that you don't.

Glad you brought that up. We have daily reports on the number of Americans (all adults) killed in Iraq - I assume by Iraqis or their sympathizers - but we DON'T have DAILY reports of how many Iraqi men, women and children have been killed by Americans.

Why not? (Even we Americans can spare a few minutes between Malls to mourn the deaths of those killed in our name with weapons bought and paid for by us.)

We also would like to know how many Iraqis have been imprisoned by us since March '03, where they're being held, the charges against them (if there are any) and the lengths of their sentences.

You may think this is irrelevant information, but we don't.