Are they high?

Scarcely had the word "leave" and then the word "Iraq" escaped his lips when Barack Obama was attacked by a gauntlet of Republicans in a perfect demonstration of reactionary idiocy. I think his next announcement should be that the sun rises in the east. Republicans would positively trip over each other racing to the microphone to deny any such thing and call him naive and "profoundly disappointing," which is what Joe Lieberman said when Obama announced the pullout.

Joe, are you profoundly nuts? Iraq elected their government, their government told us to leave, and we have spent eight years training their lackluster army and police. JUST LEAVE.

Michele "Killer Kristian" Bachmann immediately demanded that Iraq "reimburse" the US. Is she off her meds again? What if they decided to reimburse us for waging war on them, wrecking their infrastructure and killing their kids? I shudder to think of how that "reimbursement" might play out.

 John McCain calls the decision to comply with Iraq's order to leave "a serious mistake." Thanks for sharing, John. Pop some more of those happy pills, sit here in the rubber room, and tell us more.

Really. Game over. Leave. News flash: They will have some more violence. They will eventually settle upon a strongman to rule. Just leave Iraq alone. They cannot recover until we leave. We've been saying this since the summer of 2003. We've been saying since 1990 that invading Iraq was a bad idea. We've been right all along, this peace movement. The average American and the average Iraqi alike are far worse off than if we had never done violence to them.

Yes, there should have been sanctions for the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. We could have shaped Saddam's behavior without firing a shot. We chose not to do that because those who make the choice benefit from more conflict, not less. When we do something about that, we will be on our way to a world without war.