Back to the front.

Linked:

The President has said that “as Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” He claimed that 80 Iraqi army battalions are fighting alongside American troops. He did not say how many Iraqi battalions are capable of fighting without American troops. But, this week, General Casey did. The answer is: one.

If it has taken two years, 2,000 lives, 15,000 wounded and $218 billion appropriated so far to stand up one battalion of 800 Iraqi troops, how long will it take to stand up an army of 140,000 troops? At the pace of one battalion every two years, we will be in Iraq for 150 years. What is the timetable for standing up Iraq’s army?

Conservatives will usually try to deflect the issue by suggesting Liberals should quit whining about the problem and propose some solutions for once. Sorry, but the Liberal solution was to not get in this predicament in the first place. We were ignored. Not only were we ignored, but we were then outvoted by people who seemed to suggest it was such a wonderful deal they'd love to do it again. So now it's your turn, Mr & Mrs Conservative. Figure it out and do it quick. But until then, you're gonna hear it.

Oh, and:

"Bomb blasts killed six Marines in western Iraq...."

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"The American deaths brought to 1,950 the number of U.S. troops who have died since the beginning of the war in 2003, according to an Associated Press count."