INTERESTING ARGUMENT

There is something bizarre about a Congress that coughs up $60 billion to keep U.S. troops in Iraq but won't provide $20 billion more to get them home...

There are 130,000 U.S. troops here who can't leave until this place stabilizes, which won't happen until its economy restarts. Sixty percent of Iraqis are unemployed, including many Sunni Muslims who worked for Saddam's military machine or poor Shiite Muslims who hate Saddam but are swayed by radical clerics.

What sense does it make to spend billions to billet troops in Iraq's cities but leave the country so broken that the population turns its anger on those troops?

Travel Iraq from north to south and you see a country frozen in time. Infrastructure has collapsed. This happened not only because of wars and because Saddam starved whole regions to build his military and marble palaces, but also because of a decade of international sanctions at U.S. behest.

Iraq is on its back. It can't pump its oil because infrastructure is so degraded, nor can it produce enough electricity to power up industry.