Stay in Iraq until the job is done.

You have the audacity to say that your argument is simple and to the point when your previous three rounds have consisted of nothing but right-wing talking points? Your argument seems to be, from what I can piece together: * Leaving Iraq will make it a safe haven for terrorists. * Leaving Iraq will make the terrorists follow us home. * We must stay in order to create a magical land 30 years down the road. These are, at the very least, not sunk cost arguments (unlike everything else). However, they are naive and silly. There are a number of places where terrorists plan attacks and we tend to just bomb those places when we find them. Secondly there's an obvious difference between planning an attack with a step which says "travel 5,000 miles" and one that says go down the road an plant a bomb. The number of terrorists events and potential terrorists only goes up the longer we stay. They don't like us, and kids wanting to join the Jihad need only be rallied to the cause of American boots on Muslim soil and can easily go to the country to "repel the occupation". The insurgency (which is largely who we are fighting) don't care for the terrorists types but for now (until America leaves) they are in their interest, and will be killed off after we leave (some of them aren't being tolerated now even with the similar goals). Your argument boils down to more future terrorism, however, that's an argument for leaving not for staying. We are creating terrorist organizations and giving them recruits and resources by staying. They are progressively getting more and more proficient and more indoctrinated. If we stay, we have to look forward to: * More terror. * 8 billion+ dollars more a month. * Hundreds more dead American soldiers. * Hundreds of thousands more dead Iraqis. * Greater erosion of our respect in the world. * Increasing disillusionment that the US can maintain this resulting in a weaker dollar. * More American disillusionment with the government. Really, when you look at the numbers. They clearly show that the US troops are a lightning rod for terror. This is the reason people think that "fighting them there" will stop them from "fighting us here" is because if we give them low hanging fruit of American troops as fodder we can somehow avoid terror at home (twisted logic wrapped around a nugget of truth). Well, we can avoid terror at home by having a competent administration that does something when the agencies pick up the spikes in activity they did prior to 9/11. We don't need to feed the evil terrorists American children to keep them from doing the nearly impossible, rather we need to spend a few of the dollars we are wasting in Iraq to make it impossible. We have lost thousands of lives and none of them matter with regard to the question at hand. Should we stay in Iraq? We only need to look at the potential gains vs. the potential losses for each course of action. And we gain nothing by staying, save a pipedream thirty years away from the makers of "mission accomplished" and "greeted as liberators". We lose massive amounts by staying. We can't keep these losses up forever, and will waste more time before finally quiting one way or another. The administration just wants to run out the clock. That's the most dishonorable thing you could think to do. Continue with a failed strategy for no good reason at all, except to save face. Really, a couple hundred billion dollars and swaths of American lives in order to save face? Pathetic. The entire question boils down to, how much are we willing to pay in lives, money, resources, and future terror in order to allow this president to maintain the illusion that he isn't a complete and utter failure for a few more months? Bring the troops home. It wasn't worth thousands of American soldiers' lives for lies and it certainly isn't worth thousands more to postpone admitting to their mistakes. Your entire argument has been extremely weak talking points without backup or reason why anybody should believe them. Other than noting that "President Bush has stated this on numerous occasions." which is to say he has the same talking points, you've provided no foundation. Certainly the burden of proof rests on those wanting to continue a failed policy to explain why it won't be a failure if we continue it. That required argument has failed at every turn. What will staying get us? More terror, less resources, more deaths, less respect. What will leaving get us? Away from this hopeless quagmire with our resources intact. Your argument that, "we've lost so much" is simply a sunk cost fallacy. The idea that we should keep incurring such losses forever to make our already incurred losses mean something is pathetic. There's a reason sayings like "cut your losses", "don't cry over spilled milk" and "don't throw good money after bad" -- because they are true. Leaving might seem to acknowledge that they died for nothing more than Bush's lies, ideology, phantom nonsense and bellicose stupidity but staying doesn't make that false, simply less obvious. It isn't worth the lives of our soldiers to help the president save face.