This is asinine. We've expended in excess of $100B, suffered thousands of casualties, thrown our reputation and national honor on the line and we're going to leave if the new provisional government asks us to? As someone who has served in Iraq, I can't imagine anything more ridiculous. We leave when there is a sufficiently stable government in place and not one minute before. To suggest that any other course of action is acceptable is irresponsible to the point of being criminal.
Conjuring images of "mushroom clouds" over the U.S. and using the inaccurate claims of the imminent threat of Iraqi WMD, the current administration used our military to invade a country and remove its government. Now, in the resulting chaos that has enflamed the Middle East and turned the world against us, we say we'll walk away, if asked. If we walk away now, we will only leave behind a danger to America that Saddam could only dream of becoming.
There was no credible Al Qaida-Iraq link before the war, but there sure is now. I was opposed to the invasion of Iraq since it was proposed in 2002, but now that we're there, we have a responsibility to both the American and Iraqi people to stay there until a stable and secure government is in place; no if's, and's or but's about it. Leaving a weak and unstable government in power will give the terrorists fertile ground in which to recruit, rearm, and replenish their funds. It would be the second major mis-step in losing the War on Terrorism (the first being invading Iraq in the first place, when we should have been concentrating on finishing what we started in Afghanistan).
I recommend that you write your Senator or Representative and ask that they not allow a pullout from Iraq until the job is finished, irrespective of what any appointed, provisional, interim "government" in Iraq might say.
