Along with that, all bids, tenders, and in-process work should be done with full transparency and with all documents available in Arabic (and translated to English?) on the web.

How could this come to pass in the real world?

If Ron Paul were elected president, he could (and would) use his authority as commander-in-chief to immediately withdraw, gaining us not only the favor of the Muslim (or at least the Shia) world, but also saving us hundreds of billions of dollars.

My best guess is the end state is a Moqtada al-Sadr led Iraq. I hate the idea, but he is wildly popular with the majority Shia, he has an army, and like any good politician he will promise whatever the Iraqi people want to hear. In this case – the promise is a semblance of security in an Iraq free of American occupiers. Make no mistake – that is exactly what a majority of Iraqi’s want, and that is what al-Sadr is offering. I don’t know if he can deliver. No one does. The Iraqi’s don’t know that he can deliver or how much blood will be shed in getting there from here. But they do know now that we cannot deliver a peaceful safe Baghdad for them.

If this is right, and al-Sadr is the end-game, the only question is how and when we get there. At some point we will have to take the risk that things will not get appreciably worse when we leave. We could be wrong, but it is inevitable that we will have to take that risk at some point. It is only a question of when. If we had other, more competent leadership, we might be able manage a transition in Iraq with at least a facade of democracy in place and a minimum of additional bloodshed. With this administration, we are likely to see nothing but an objective of not letting al-Sadr take over on their watch, and pushing the problem over the horizon to the next administration, at enormous additional cost to our treasury, our military, our standing in the world, and an even greater cost to the Iraqi people.