Claiming he's the only candidate supporting a clean break from Iraq is a little silly, but I'm glad he raises the issue. Hillary's "withdraw" policy, in particular, is unsettling. Just last sunday, as part of her media blitz, she claims that an unspecified number of US military forces will remain in Iraq as part of her policy. Clinton claims these residual forces would protect the relatively stable Kurdish regions in Iraq, important American interests (embassies, surely, but would this include business interests as well?) and continue the fight against Al-Qaeda in Iraq. This seems pretty strange. Anti-war progressives should be pretty concerned with such a policy which seems to have more in common with a South Korean model for withdraw than the Vietnam model (not so much a model really, but the result of circumstance/nonintervention). I don't see how we could possibly accomplish these missions without a substantial residual force in the region. Continued US Military presence in Iraq (and the rest of the Middle East for that matter) only antagonizes and polarizes the local people, providing an easy target for aggression. If we can't effectively combat Al-Qaeda in Iraq now, how are we going to do so (while also protecting the embassies, and the kurds) following a "withdraw"?

I'm not sure how fitting the comparison to Vietnam would be when imagining the post-withdraw, clean-break Iraq, but I do think it's worth considering. Once we left Vietnam, that left the South Vietnamese Army completely at the mercy of the North Vietnamese forces. Peace agreements, following our withdraw, quickly collapsed (just as the Americans had feared). With the blessing of their financiers, North Vietnamese troops overwhelmed the south, eventually capturing Saigon (captured so stirringly in that photograph of American/S.Vietnamese officials evacuating in a helicopter on a Saigon roof). It seems our worst fears were coming to fruition. Now, of course, it turns out Communist Vietnam wasn't a stepping stone for continued Russian style communist revolution across the rest of South East Asia.

South Korea, on the other hand, while stable and democratic, still faces an adversarial, aggressive neighbor. I'm not sure the Korean peninsula would be a bastion of freedom, full of rainbows and a contented, smiling populace, but it does seem that surviving American cold war policies have kept North Korea's aggression well fueled.

Is this a fair comparison? Would a clean-break, Vietnam style, sort itself out in the end? It seems that way to me, and I can't imagine why any Democratic candidate would substantial residual forces in Iraq, when considering the details of their withdraw plans.

The main problem with the ad is that it's absolute Bull Shit. The difference between Edwards and Richardson's plan is that Edwards leaves the door slightly open for a possible use of troops to protect aid workers. That's it, entirely. As anyone who watched the TPM interview could tell.

Stoller and Bowers have been playing willful dimwits on this, probably because Richardson has been stroking their egos.

WTF is wrong with Stoller and Bowers? They seem to be reputable in the blogosphere, but reading open left and seeing this ad makes me think they are morons.

Richardson? Mr. Can't Attend a Minor League Baseball Game Without an Inappropriate Touching Incident?

Really?

Idiots.