The "voice of America" Walter Cronkite is one of the main reasons we pulled out of Vietnam. Notice I didn't say we lost because in reality we were winning and about an 8th of an inch from winning it all. I respect Montel for his compasion but we are too deep in this hole now to start cutting deep into the hearts of Americans. I'm in the military and I want to win this thing. If I die I don't need Fox news telling anyone I made the ulitmate sacrafice. That would be like a crackhead singing at my funeral.

Or what about homeless people that die every day due to the economic slump bush has created.

aye, I think we can all agree on that no matter what your stance is.

Kill ratio? That's what all wars come down to? It's tough-guy cowboy nonsense like this that give the military a bad name. If you don't understand that there's more--far more--to war than kill ratio, than I'm betting you've either never been anywhere, or if you have, you were either one of those hard-asses that did more damage than good over there, or you served as a REMF, and you have to say tough guy things like "Kill them all and let God sort it out!" in order to make yourself feel big. Which is it? Cherry, mouth breathing bully, or chair-borne ranger?

Not tactically, operationally, nor strategically speaking have wars or even battles typically been a simple matter of body count v. body count. And certainly not in a counter-insurgency. As long as the idea the insurgents support prevails, they win. They can send waves of people at us, and we'll cut them in half with our 240-B's and our SAW's, and only take one or two of our guys from each squad out of the fight, but if the idea they're fighting for can recruit just as many people for tomorrow's fight, then we lost.

And yes, I think we should pull out. Police work like this only functions if the people we're policing know that we're not going to do the work for them indefinitely. Give them a hard date. Stick to it. And bring back our guys so we don't have to hyper-extend our military any longer, so we can be ready for the next, real threat (and hopefully not an imagined threat like this one was).

Uh, you didn't answer my question, but I'll respond, even though this doesn't pertain at all to the Montel video, you hijackers.

Anyone who's taken Political Science 101 could probably tell you that Democratic Peace Theory is misguided. Statistics are often skewed in favor of DPT, and many people refuse to acknowledge that peace between democratic nations in the past hundred years has been underpinned by US dominance.

A war where two sides fought for an extended amount of time and the kill ratio didn't matter? I think Vietnam has already been referenced once. If you want another example where kill ratio didn't matter, I suppose you could say Korea, but that might be debatable.

If you're going to make empty, unprovable claims about the future, a la "If we leave now we will eventually have to return and even more people will die," I'm going to have to ask you to prove that claim. Otherwise, I'm simply going to respond with more empty, unprovable claims, a la "Continuing to fight the war in Iraq makes Baby Jesus cry."