WHAT TO EXPECT IN IRAQ

Matthew Yglesias makes a good point about the Iraq debate. Every doomsday scenario given to argue for keeping US troops in Iraq ends up happening anyway.

This, though, has been the time-honored debating ploy of the Iraq forever crowd for years. I recall in 2005 when the troops needed to stay or else there would be ethnic cleansing. So the troops stayed and guess what happened in 2006? Ethnic cleansing. Then when the ethnic cleansing ended, that proved our deployment was working and had to be continued.

I think we can take this farther. Right now we need to maintain troop levels to keep the progress made by the surge and support the Maliki government. Therefore, by the end of 2008, we'll have lost all gains made by the surge, and the Maliki government will have collapsed.

David has spoken.