I'm an atheist who grew up a muslim in the middle east, I don't need ledeen or anybody else to tell who to call fascists.

"We lost the say we started and we won the day we stopped."

Ditto for Iraq and Afghanistan. Way past time to bring these ordnance expenditure expeditions and earn-while-you-don't-learn commendation accumulation boondoggles to their inevitable, whimpering conclusions.

Thank you for shining reality in my face. But I'm left with some questions you might clear up.

First, can I say that Iraq is still under occupation ?
While we still have around 100,000 uniformed military, and around 250,000 contractor employees there, there is no overt US military control of day-to-day affairs.
Sure, US advisors try to boss around the various Ministers, but more and more they ignore us.
Does the fact that there has been a formal transfer of sovereignty to the government of PM al-Maliki, and the fact that he signed an agreement with President Bush providing for US troops to stay through 2011, mean that our forces are now there with the invitation of, or at least the permission of, a legit Iraqi government ?
Keep in mind 2 factors before answering:
#1. PM al-Maliki was chosen by Secretary Rice and Ambassador Khalilzad, not by the Iraqi Parliament, as the Iraqi Constitution provided.
#2. International law says that elections held under occupation, and governments formed under occupation, are not valid.

Second question: Sayyid al-Sadr is in Qom, which is in Iran. How are you going to cut out his tongue with him in Iran ? Isn't that why the Bremer fatwa was never carried out, rather than some purported tolerance of opposition by the occupation authority ? Didn't Bremer and Casey and Petraeus before you all send teams to assassinate him ?
And how do you propose to hang 60% of 28 million Iraqis from streetlamps ? There aren't enough streetlamps.

Third, if you will allow that the US is still militarily occupying Iraq, and if you allow (you may not) that over 1 million Iraqis have died as a result of our invasion and occupation, how is that not "brutal ?"
More than 3 million have fled, either from the US military or from Shi'a militias. Does that indicate a perception of brutality to you ?
In my blindness to reality, I imagine that al-Maliki has been campaigning on promises of kicking the Americans out of the country. I imagine that the Iraqis, the Shi'a, at least, are lapping it up. Why aren't they showering our troops with flowers and chocolates ?
I admit that the US military has been restrained and professional in their conduct, only destroying homes when necessary. But the 60,000 Mercenaries have not been so restrained.
Have you ever heard of Zapata Engineering ? That firm alone killed over 30,000 innocent civilians during their job of collecting and destroying "enemy munitions." They fired up every structure every time they drove past it, for more than 3 years, before anyone from the Corps of Engineers said anything.

Let’s say that the Iraqis told us to leave, and President Obama agrees to withdraw all forces immediately. I assume that you are Ray Odierno IRL, based on your comments. Just last month you said that you would never pull out of Iraq, that too much American blood had been spilled to ever give Iraq back to the Iraqis. Obama is afraid of you and of all the Generals who are loyal to President Bush (as opposed to being loyal to, say, the Constitution.) Our troops aren't going anywhere until Obama starts firing Generals for insubordination. Golly, he won't even fire his WH Chief of Staff for insubordination.

Do you really think the US military will pull out ? Won’t that look too much like failure ? Won’t you resist such an order ?
.

The reason that Sadr has been able to shout about political resistance is because he's stayed safe in Iran. And don't waste our time throwing around nonsense terms like "Islamo-fascist." You've been listening to propagandists like Michael Ledeen too much.
As far as leaving Iraq goes, yes, I'm sure President Obama want to leave, but the neocon/Israel Lobby dominated policy establishment and media wants to ensure that we leave a submissive government when we do, and therein lies the rub.

(Don't have the inclination to get a Google account so I can have a username other than "Anonymous" but this is Xenophon.)

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2010/03/06/mission-accomplished-deja-vu

Grand Ayatullah Muhammad Taqi Modarresi Calls for Enthusiastic Participation in Elections

The ONLY REASON there's an election in Iraq in the first place is because of this thing you call brutal foreign occupation, and the 'reign' of Odierno as you put it.

The slaves of Murdoch have recently resumed demandin’ to be paid for most of the most predictably biased op-ed page in the known world. Some of the Wall Street Jingo customers, though, are traitors to their Class who don’t mind swiping and reproducing such things in full.

So here, at second swipe, is what they are hidin’ about the Rev. Señorito Sadr behind the Teabag Curtain:

On Friday, Mr. Sadr’s aides distributed thousands of pamphlets directing Baghdad residents to vote for specific candidates for Mr. Sadr’s Iraqi National Alliance. The directions broke out preferred candidates for 80 different areas in Sadr City, the Baghdad slum that has long been a Sadr stronghold.

Nearly every other party is fielding two candidates per seat as the law allows. Their assumption: the more candidates the broader list has on the ballot, the more overall votes it will garner as a whole.

***

That may not sound so fiendishly clever to you, yet there are people around here (Cambridge MA) who have not figured proportional representation that well in over half a century.

Healthy days.