Some carrots will go a lot farther than 100,000 new targets. Easy for me to say, but help those who help themselves and all that. It is a drop in the bucket compared to what we are spending now.

I think its a great idea, and definitely outside the box. Now, it is possible some of our troops may still be itchy for action, perhaps we could deploy them along our southern border. Not to kill anyone, mind you, but put a laser sight on every rifle, and let them put red dots on the folks coming across. Could be funny.

The first problem is that, if one really did what you suggested, there would be no political will to go back after three months. Second, whatever infrastructure that you had put in place would be looted/destroyed; i.e. forgetting Iraqi infrastructure, I'm talking about U.S. facilities. Along these lines it's not just the U.S. troops but a whole mess of contractors and their infrastructure. Another consideration is that the expense of actually removing everyone and everything is probably alot larger than the expense of the current rotation program. It may be more logical to pull back into remote bases and see how things turn out. Regardless, if we don't have the political will to do something about a pig like Muqtada al-Sadr now then what the heck is the point. The Shiites will/are cleansing the area of Sunni's and the Kurds will cut some sort of deal with the Shiites...assuming the Turks don't come over the border and really mess things up. As an aside, if the U.S. really did pull out the Turks would most definitely come over the border and probably take Kirkuk. They have already dusted off the old deeds they have for that land under the Ottomans.

Et tu, Brutus?