Saddam is gone. Why are we still in Iraq?

This is one example of the "good news" out of Iraq. I'm sure that there are places where schools have been rebuilt and not yet destroyed again. Consider this:

For the most part the Iraqi's are glad america is there, but they are the silent majority. They are too scared that if they speak out for us they would be kidnapped or murdered. One Iraqi asked me why America doesn't build schools or donate cars like the Japanese did. I told him it's because every time we try to build something either the workers get scared and don't show up because they are working for Americans and scared of retribution or because it is constantly attacked by one of the various militias.

Then there is this:

The one of the biggest problems I deal with is the fact that even though we fought a three day battle to secure an IP station and we won. We abandoned it the next day and within a week the Mahdi army bullied all the Iraqi police out of it, placed demo charges and blew it up. And our leadership didn't even bat an eye. Can't figure out why we would fight so hard for something that had 4 guys killed and 12 wounded just so we can let it get blown up.

And it happened all the time, we'd go somewhere, hang out long enough for stuff to quiet down, move on and then the place we left would be just the same as before we showed up. I think the only people that had any sort of morale were the officers and higher NCO's (E-8 and up) that didn't have to go out and face the possiblity of getting blown up every day. We had guys breaking down left and right and had to go see psychiatrists because they couldn't deal with being out in the city for 7 days straight in a shot with 12 hours up and 4 hours down.

This is what the fighting is like, in a war to remove Saddam Husseins' WMDs. You know, the ones that didn't exist?

Bush and Cheney have yet to come clean about the real reasons to invade Iraq. Then we get stories like the one above in which 4 guys were killed and 12 wounded to hold an Iraqi police station that we then abandoned and allowed it to be blown up. Why?

The White House tells us we will stay in Iraq as long as it takes, but the military brass is already leaking that the timetable for withdrawal Bush claims would be a mistake is already being planned for. It will happen next Spring and Summer, of course, so that the Republicans don't have to run for relection with our troops still in active combat in Iraq.

The justification for our withdrawal will be the new constitution the Iraqi government is writing and will force through even though the Sunnis reject it. That is the document that is supposed to end the insurgency in Iraq. All it will do is allow Bush to declare victory before the bug-out.

An amazing victory it will be, too. In almost every respect the Americans and the Iraqi people will be a lot worse off than they were before Bush decided to use the unrelated event of 9/11 to invade Iraq. If nothing else, he will have destroyed the U.S. ground forces as an effective force for a decade at least.

I am amazed and proud of the professionalism of our armed forces who, even for the lies this White House has presented, are doing their jobs and fighting this war. It is sad that their leaders cannot demonstrate a similar profesionalism and good sense. This is a voluntary war fought by the Republican Party for reasons they refuse to be honest about. Let's not forget this.