[LesLattis]

The "message" is to our enemies.

And it says: "You win. We will leave shortly."

It's strange how black and white the pundits of the war make it out to be.

Our presence in Iraq is not about winning or losing since neither have been defined. It's Bush's hollow rhetoric about "Victory" without telling us what victory would mean that has set us up for failure.

We went into Iraq under false pretenses, but we did take out Saddam which is not a bad thing. The problem is that the administration naively assumed that the Iraqis would pick themselves up by their bootstraps and create their own democracy. They had no plan B. Now we are in a mess without a real solution. So our choice is "lose now" or "lose later".

Sorry, but the realities of the way it's turned out mean that it's a no win situation. The perception that we are "losing" by withdrawing was created largely because of Bush's grandstanding predicting that we would prevail.

So we lost the Battle of Iraq... but there are no real winners in that battle anyway. It's not like we lose the War on Terror. I'm sure the War on Terror is still on full tilt. We just need to find a more effective way to wage it. The War on Terror is not a conventional war.