Agreed. Of course, I’m someone who thinks that we’ll have to raise taxes anyway, if not to pay for Iraq, then to pay for everything else that we’re financing with debt these days.

I’ve come to realize that any politician who pledges “no new taxes” during his campaign shouldn’t be elected. Either he’s lying in order to get elected, in which case he doesn’t deserve to be elected, or he actually believes that we’re taxed too much and can solve our problems without any new taxes, in which case he’s and idiot and isn’t smart enough to run a dog pound, never mind a city, state, or the country.

To Bush deciding between raising taxes and leaving Iraq is life between a rock and a hard place.

I won’t say I’d be happy with higher taxes, but at least I’d have the consolation that our Congress gets it. Hell, even the withdrawal plans are BS – they’re all playing fast and loose with the reality that it’ll take at least a year to pull all our forces out, never mind the very important questions about how we make sure we don’t have to go back again to stomp on a potentially renewed al-Qaeda or its descendants.

I’m tempted to say, they got themselves into this, let them get themselves out. But, of course, they won’t.

Instead, troop withdrawals must begin, plans for permanent bases abandoned, and, most importantly, cut that bloated defense budget (which doesn’t include the war) in half.