I don't care what anybody says ...

We ain't leaving. My fine-feathered friend Mimus:

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Which begs the question of what the definition of the global war on terror actually is. If the military brass is asking for that much money on top of the half a trillion already granted by Congress, it must be pretty damn broad. And to further enliven things, this story appears right as a report that the Iraq Study Group plans to call for a major withdrawl of American troops from Iraq appears -- even though this is highly unlikely as long as Bush is president. The inflated figure could also be interpreted as evidence that an invasion of Iran is inevitable, no matter how foolhardy it would be.

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Ain't nobody on the 'R' side of this equation making plans to leave Iraq.

"But F-man," you say, "this is to prosecute the entire 'War on Terra'."

What has that 'global struggle' become, I ask you?

Most of the military's assets are focused on the Iraqi occupation, only token units are fighting al-Qaeda in other parts of the world - 15,000 in Afghanistan (we see how that's going), another 1800 in Africa (though it's generally believed Somalia, remember them, will be the next Afghanistan), and a few other, even smaller, units. The occupation of Iraq eats up the lion's share of any appropriations for the 'War on Terra' and don't let anybody tell you differently.

No one is making any plans to leave Iraq, nor are they in any big hurry to combat al-Qaeda, the abidication of al-Anbar province being enough evidence of that.

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But here's an even funnier thing. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Peter Pace, who also says al-Qaeda is the main culprit in Iraq, is pulling troops out of the al-Anbar province, al-Qaeda in Iraq's base of operations, and putting them in Baghdad, smack in the middle of the civil war between Shiites and Muslims that both Bush and Pace deny is occurring. A recent Marine Corps intelligence assessment said that the battle for al-Anbar is unwinnable without a major infusion of more troops in the region. You'd think that Pace, a Marine himself, might pay heed to that report, and might suggest that rather than take troops out of Anbar to reinforce Baghdad, we should take troops out of Baghdad to reinforce Anbar.

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For al-Qaeda is nothing to the White House if it isn't, first and foremost, a prop to increase the fear factor in this country, as we've all seen in the past several elections. As I've said many times, neither Osama nor Bush can live without the other.

The only way we can credibly fight the War on Terror is to pull our troops out of Iraq, let those poor people put their nation back together however they can, and focus our attention on the people who really intend to do us harm.