Mike the Usurper wrote:
The overall on the surge is exactly what was predicted. Violence is down slightly in the troop concentrated areas, but up in others, in other words, it's a wash. Further, the point of the surge was to buttime for the Iraqis to build a unifying government. That clearly isn't happening.

The point was to reduce violence in the troop concentrated areas. The idea is that if violence is held down in those areas that those areas can develop real economic activity in a secure environment, which hopefully won't deteriorate again when the troops leave. The idea is to provide a window of opportunity for peace to get a foodhold. The impact on the areas where troops aren't concentrated is not relevent to the way this strategy works. It is a neighborhood by neighborhood approach, not a wholistic approach. Having said that, I'd like a source for your statement that the violence level has been "a wash." Its not clear that this is the case. US casualties are down.

This strategy has absolutely nothing at all to do with government negotiations. As a military strategy it is older then the present political context by several years; it predates the 2004 election.
Trying to connect those two things together is a political fantasy.

It's working so we should get out? WTF?

I agree that this doesn't make sense. If this strategy is demonstrated to be effective in actually securing neighborhoods, we need more troops on the ground. The goal here ought to be to solve the problem in Iraq and not to win some domestic political spat. "Get out, right or wrong," is just as stupid as "Stay in, right or wrong."

Hillary is hardly a "base" Democrat if by "base" you mean left. Thats because there really is no left in the United States. The Unites States has a radical right (absolutely no taxes, government by the word of God) and a moderate right (some social programs, more tolerance in morality).

Hillary is what I call a soccer mom authoritarian. She supports more social controls and more economic controls as long as it doesn't significantly impact wall street. So did her husband. Her husband was pro government surveillance. He even ran on the prospect of federally mandated national school uniforms. Their long term vision is Singapore with equal rights for women. Really it is.

The only thing I confidently expect out of Hillary is that her statements running into the election will be extremely savvy and strategic, and will have little bearing on how she governs if elected. There is no telling what she'll actually deliver in office, but it will be driven again more by strategy than ideology. The problem is that the strategic interest in question might not actually be yours.

RE: Clinton, McCain split on Iraq pullout - Yahoo! News