Unfortunately, Ron Kuby, you did not give me a chance to refute your opinion that you were originally wrong about the surge. You apologized for your former opinion. I say you are not necessarily correct now and may have been correct then. The surge, i.e. our infusion of more American troops while seemingly tamping down the violence really did not IMPROVE the situation. You fail to state that there has been a huge exodus from Iraq to places like Syria AND there has been a sufficient amount of ethnic cleansing already so that the insurgents ability to create violence has quite naturally diminished. In addition, I wanted to mention but you gave me NO time that Muftada Al Sadr for reasons known mainly to him but may include his relationship to Iran, has decided not to press his case. Moreover, the Sunni Awakening took place BEFORE the surge and was pumped up by American bucks PAYING Sunnis to go after Al Quaeda and not to attack US troops or their Iraqi allies. There is more to the so called success of the surge than the surge itself.

In addition, people continue to die. Not as many perhaps as a year ago but nonetheless there are several explosions every day which do not get coverage. Do NOT believe all that you hear or in this case do NOT hear. The surge brought more death, more destruction and Iraq is SO devastated there is nothing much left. 70% are without potable water. Sure, more guns and troops may have tamped down the violence but if so what now? What do we do now? How long do we stay? Fifty years, a hundred years, forever? The surge maybe bought us some time but at what expense and at whose expense. Just some things I would have talked about had you not cut me off.