Bush never plans to leave Iraq, no matter HOW bad or HOW hopeless it gets

This is a very important point that, oddly, Bush himself has openly admitted repeatedly. He plans to keep US troops in Iraq until the end of his term, period. We're not leaving. It doesn't matter how bad things get, how many Americans die, how much money it costs. It doesn't even matter how hopeless the situation becomes. He will NOT remove US troops from that country until "we win."

But what if we can't win?

This is the question that Bush refuses to answer. Bush has only ONE plan for Iraq. We win, then we come home. And its corollary, we don't come home UNTIL we win.

But what if we never win?

While it's cute for George Bush and the Republicans to always pull the "America" card and tell everyone, ad infinitum, that Americans ALWAYS win (because we're the GOOD GUYS), that is simply bravado and a lie. Being good guys didn't help us in Vietnam - we lost and had to withdraw. Being good guys didn't help us in Lebanon in the 1980s - we lost and withdrew. It also didn't help us in Somalia in the 1990s - same story.

Every decade of the past 4 we've had at least one big military loss and been forced to withdraw. So who is to say that we won't lose in Iraq, or haven't lost already? We are not infallible. No one wants to "lose," but to suggest that we can't lose because Americans simply don't lose, or because the cost of losing is too high (hello, Vietnam?), is not a sane basis for figuring out what our strategy should be in this war.

George Bush and the Republican party (along with a few GOP clones like Joe Lieberman) are refusing to accept, or even discuss, the reality that is Iraq. We are in the midst of a terrible war that is not going well. Yet our leaders refuse to change course in terms of how they execute that war because they have a belief that no matter how poorly they execute the war we will win anyway. George Bush, as the emodiment of "America," is infallible - nothing he does can lead to defeat, so stop whining.

That is a very dangerous basis on which to run a country, especially when the "infallible" monarch is someone as incompetent as George W. Bush. The man lost New Orleans, he can lose Iraq.

P.S. A second possibility, just as disturbing, is that Bush and the Republicans KNOW that Iraq is lost, but because of a desire to save face they refuse to withdraw. They want to leave the problem for the next president two and a half years from now simply because they don't want to be blamed for the coming disaster. To hell with the cost in lives and dollars. The Republicans would rather see our soldiers die than have their party lose face over a war they've already lost.