Does anyone else feel like John Kerry's opinion about Iraq is irrelevant by now? As in, these same words would have greater effect coming from Obama or Kucinich?

John Kerry is no more or less relevant than any other senator - he has a vote. His opinions here are well presented and the opinions are far from irrelevant - it just doesn't particularly matter that he is the one stating them.

The statistic regarding the ethnic composition of Baghdad (from 65% Sunni to 75% Shia in 4.5 years) is something of which I wasn't aware. I knew that a lot of people were leaving Iraq (more than 2 million and continuing at a rate of 50 thousand a month, last I heard), but I wasn't aware of the extent to which people are moving within Iraq as well.

I generally agreed, except for that bit at the end where he compared the number of terror attacks within a 4-5 month span with the number of terror attacks within the span of a year. Not cool. Other than that it was good though.

George Stephanopolouopolouopoloulpolopoloupolous is such a hack, offering all the Republican talking points to counter legitimate points and offer "balance". He is a snide, annoying little prick. Kerry was on point today.

I had no problem with Stephanopoulos at all. He offered the GOP talking point "rebuttals" - and as credibly as they could be offered. That is his job - not to figuratively fellate Kerry as Brit Hume would do for Bush. Kerry knocked down each point and brought the "surge is a success" balloons crashing to the ground. Unlike the assholes at FOX, Stephanopoulos gave Kerry the time to do that. I didn't see snideness there.

The whole Iraq situation really illustrates the folly of man. It will probably become a reasonably stable country within 20-30 years, but as Kerry said no part of the solution is military.

The unfortunate thing is that the key is so simple - a realisation within Iraq that the solution to all of their problems must be political. The bizarre thing is that I'm sure this mantra is being repeated within Iraq, and will be repeated every day for the next 30 years. At what magical point it means enough to the militias to stop fighting, who knows?

Moreover, people within conflicts can often come very close to a solution and yet so far.. this happened with Northern Ireland, Palestine.. and it will happen within Iraq.

The solution will become evident within the next 5-10 years, but people won't be ready for another 30.

One last thing - the latest Bin Laden video is probably a mashed up fake. The video is frozen during the parts that he references contemporary events and the audio is dodgy.

Most likely CIA propaganda made out of a previously unreleased tape.

P.S. 9/11 tomorrow - I wonder whether Giuliani will set a record for "referencing the date of the current day more times than anybody else in history". Could be a good one for the "CIA World Fact Book".

First, what is it with people slamming this Stephanopoulos guy? (I had to copy and paste his name) Every time he appears on this site, it is apparently someone's duty to call him a 'hack'. Does one gain entrance to some elite echelon of cool by doing so?

Second, it is a goddamn shame that John Kerry isn't our president. I firmly believe that if that man had cut off 2/3 of his hair in the run-up to the 2004 election that this country would be in a much better place right now.

Kerry did a good job of stating why John McCain's constant appearance of pandering to the troops by constantly equating a pullout as a military defeat is absolute nonsense. I used to like McCain, when he wasn't a candidate. The US sent troops in there to do two main things, destroy Iraq's military capability and eliminate Saddam's control of the government. The "temporary" peace-keeping and training-up of a new security force were lesser non-combat follow on missions. For all intents and purposes, the US military did everything they were tasked to do within their normal capability. If we leave, it in no way whatsoever means the insurgents have won. They will contine to kill each other as they are doing now. McCain's military service can in no way be scoffed at but jesus christ, the military exists to defend American liberty and serves under elected leadership which is supposed to represent the will of the people, most of which are civilians. The civilians are not supposed to take their political cues from the alleged wishes of the troops, they ultimately take their orders from the civilians. Tell a marine rifleman with a young family who is looking at his third rotation in Iraq coming up that the will of the people is that we no longer commit out military there and he can spend some time with his wife and kids and I bet he's not going give you much of an arguement. This is not 1969 and people are not running around spitting on servicemembers in the states or calling them baby killers. We have supported the troops and in every sense that Iraq did have military missions that could be won or lost, they won. No dishoner in that. What does McCain think Iraq would have to look and act like before he would be able think that no Americans died in vain? It's not our country and it's not going to look anything like our society and government in any of our lifetimes.

I'm glad he brought up the point about the partitioning since those of us that have been on the ground had seen that coming for a long time now (and I mean a long time as in years). It was a no-brainer just like the involvement of Iranian elements after the Dawa party took over. Shame that those in the beltway have built such paradigms they blind themselves to reality.

The one point that is continually overlooked by most is that it wasn’t just the violence in Al Anbar that drove the tribes to make a stand, those elements affiliated with AQ also put a stranglehold on the lines of communication used for smuggling and were taking control of the money. It was fine when they were just attacking our forces, once they started impacting the living of tribal leaders in the province, all bets were off.

Kelly - Very good points. If you look at the list of reasons for being there we've already met them.

Eliminate threat of WMDs – done (discovered for sure that there weren’t any) Remove Saddam – done Assist in creating Iraqi constitution – done Assist in holding elections – done (and if you didn’t know they would vote along sectarian lines than you weren’t paying attention)

Looks to me like the job is done. Iraq isn’t our Vietnam, its AQ’s. We can leave, they can’t.

"There goes that John Kerry, talking 'bout all the tech'nikal stuff again. He must not support our troops and our WINNING of this war!"

As someone talks with such clarity as this, it becomes clear that we are fighting as much of a religious war as they are.

I think that a lot of republicans think that winning this war is by turning Iraq into "lil' america", captialism, christianity, and a 25% voting participation rate.

I also think partition is the solution with the least chance for bloodshed over the next 15 years, but iraqis have, in polls, pretty consistently said they dont want that.