Let's keep fighting about Palin and Obama and Experience and gender and traps and wathcing our words.  Heaven forbid we should actually speak loudly and clearly on matters of literal life and death.  And how many HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF IRAQIS have we murdered/help murder?

Are we going to continue to screw future generations or are we going to move away from a 19th century fuel?

Today's veep pick made it as clear a choice as could be.

Here's a clue Chris?  Remember Obama's commitment to withdraw from Iraq in 16 months.  Here is the full text of Obama's acceptance speech.

http://www.demconvention.com/barack-obama/

find the words "16 months" in them.

To me, it's a sickening deja vu...Vietnam 2.0.

I was in the streets nearly ten years before that one came to a frantic and miserable close...59,000 dead GIs, 300,000 maimed and wounded...uncounted Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, allies.

It's somewhat relative, you see.  The numbers, I mean.  They have somehow lost their power to shake us out of our everyday lives of fateful acceptance.

And time...time has lost its power too.  We are only 'halfway thru this occupation' if Vietnam is any guide...timewise.

We seem not to have learned any of the lessons of that war...the war of my young adulthood.  I never thought that generation would allow a repeat after that insanity.  That reality stuns me still.

It's not that people don't care...but they don't care enough.  Not enough to do anything about it.  Not really.  It's not a part of their daily reality...not unless you're a military family or a peace activist.

It's not even at the top of the issues list anymore.

"It's still the economy, stupid!"

When Americans can't go shopping because their credit cards are maxed out, THEN there is trouble.  You remember...it was after 9-11 that George Bush advised Americans to "go shopping."  They reelected him -- several catastrophes and 2 wars later.

And the Democrats?  MY Democrats?  Too busy eating their own to take on the Republicans.

We have a Democratic majority congress, and they've been in charge for 2 years. They bear the lowest approval rating ever. Lower even than the Republican president. And that group wants us to reward them with a Democratic president so they can do whatever they want.

I'm not confident that the candidate has any fiscal responsibility genes. The decadent living he is doing on the money "the people" are giving him is way outside necessity for running an effective campaign. Considering the state of the economy, shouldn't he be encouraging those who have change to spare to help their neighbors? He had access to public funds, but he wouldn't be able to have these flashy events on that.

I don't know that the Democratic party is necessarily the party of the working class, anymore. Speeches won't convince me. I need to see something that proves this candidate really can understand the people of this country.

We've seen what he does with a fat checkbook. And, when he starts to run low, he just keeps telling people to give him more. He hasn't proven to me that he's the right mind to grasp what needs to happen to improve our economy.

it won't stop anytime within the next year, regardless of who is elected, since that would most likely be the minimum time required for an orderly departure.

As the WSWS wrote:

But his indictment of the Bush, McCain & Co. was notable for what it left out. There was no mention of Guantánamo, torture, secret CIA prisons, illegal wiretapping, or all the other violations of democratic rights carried out on the pretext of conducting a "war on terror." In a key Senate vote last month, Obama backed expanded wiretapping and surveillance powers for agencies like the National Security Agency and the FBI.

Equally significant, Obama criticized the war in Iraq as a strategic blunder, not an act of aggression that has resulted in the slaughter of over one million innocent people. ...

Even Obama's pledges of improved social conditions were linked to the growth of American militarism. Thus he called for a guarantee of an affordable college education to every young American "if you commit to serving your community or your country."

While this language might appeal to young people facing skyrocketing tuition costs, it has a very definite, and very reactionary, subtext: Obama is planting the seeds for a new Democratic administration to reestablish the draft. Such an effort would certainly be accompanied not only by manufactured panic over some new foreign policy crisis or terrorist attack, but by claims that compulsory military service is needed in the name of "fairness" and "shared sacrifice." ...

Even more ominously, he declared, "We need a president who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past." In other words, instead of continuing the stalemate in Iraq, Obama wants to extract US troops from that quagmire so they can be used in Afghanistan, against Iran, or in the struggle against more powerful antagonists like China and Russia.

I think it will change much more quickly under Obama.

the only way it's going to change quickly, is with a departure based solely on how fast we can get transports loaded and moved out, not on the actual ground situation.

iraq is a country in chaos, thanks to george bush. all that stands between taliban/al queda control is the US military. the iraqi military is light years away from being competent to establish countrywide security on its own. unless we can convince the UN to place a huge force (a huge force that would be primarily composed of US troops) in iraq, to replace us, we're stuck, for years. that is just a political and military fact.

obama, et al can opine all they want, there's really almost no way of getting around this logisitical nightmare, unless we're willing to concede the country to the terrorists.