It takes approx 13 weeks for a raw American recruit to become a trained soldier and go over to Iraq.

There is absolutely no reason why the Iraqi government can not train their soldiers at or near the same rate. Even if they have to fly their soldiers over here [or Europe] for training and fly them back.

The reason they do not is that there is absolutely no incentive for the Iraqi government to take on the tremendous cost and responsibility of defending their own country especially while the best military in the world is doing it for free.

We are giving them hundreds of billions of dollars and the lives of our children, friends, and spouses [and parents] so they can sit around and argue over parliamentary procedures or the wording of their constitution.

The Bush Administration is willing to close schools and fire teachers if they don't meet certain federally mandated standards. Why don’t we have any standards for foreign governments who are living off our “welfare” and the blood of our soldiers? For the amount of money we have spent SO FAR in Iraq we could have hired over 3 million addition new teachers, 13,887 of them in NH alone. With the amount of money we have spent SO FAR in Iraq we could have paid for 23,240,863 children to attend Head Start.

With all this money gone to Iraq and even more planned to go what will we have to give up so Iraq Politicians can twiddle their thumbs some more? Social Security, Public Schools, Interstate Highways?

And that is just the money! What is the value of an American soldier’s life? Somehow I don't think that it means as much to the politicians in Iraq as it does to us. I am beginning to question whether it means very much at all to the politicians in Washington.

The federal government should immediately set quotas for Iraqi troop training that the Iraq government has to meet and for every Iraq troop that is trained and ready ONE AMERICAN TROOP MUST COME HOME!!!!

Of coarse there is the very real possibility that the Bush administration isn't interested in getting out of Iraq. There is much talk about permanent military bases and the American military becoming the permanent defensive force for Iraq in exchange for access to their oil. AS of this writing we have lost 1685 soldiers in Iraq [another 12762 have been wounded] is there anyone anywhere in this country who is willing to see that number go to 1686 so gas prices will go down?