Hugh Fitzgerald has still another in a long, long line of pieces explaining why we need to leave Iraq as soon as possible at JW:

I have been asked: "Will not the Shi’a, once they feel empowered and secure, not ask us to leave and exact a bloody revenge on the Sunni?" The mere asking of such a question is telling: the part about will they not "ask us to leave" at a certain point.

Of course they will. But not before having kept us around, if they can, as long as possible, for several reasons. The most important is to have the American soldiers do as much of the fighting and dying and getting wounded as possible on behalf of the "government of Iraq" -- i.e. the Shi'a who now control the "government of Iraq." The second is to make sure that as much money as possible is inveigled out of those Americans -- and how many Iraqis are now living high, including those who escaped abroad, with loot from the generous and freespending Infidels, winning hearts, winning minds, spending like there was no tomorrow. The more time the Americans spend there, the more money they are likely to hand out. The more time they spend in Iraq, the more likely it is that they, those Americans, will keep building that absurd $595 million dollar monument to a fantasy, that American Embassy complex in the Green Zone that will never, ever, serve the function, or be filled with the personnel, that were so blithely envisioned when that ridiculous project was begun three years ago.

The longer the Americans stick around, the more likely it is that they can be inveigled into handing over all kinds of military equipment, on the theory that "without it" the "Iraqis" can't function, can't protect themselves. The American generals, or some of them (not Abizaid, probably, but hearts-and-minds Chiarelli, and Casey, and some of the others) will find that plausible. The Administration will find that plausible. It isn't enough, after all, to train the "Iraqis" to be a real fighting force, and thus to create the best-trained Arab Muslim army in the Middle East. No, we must arm it better -- after all, aren't they going to be our permanent friends? Otherwise, why would we have spent all the money we already have spent? Why would we be building that $595 million dollar embassy complex? No, having spent so much, now's not the time to become suspicious -- let's give the Iraqis what they so desperately need. That is the Iraqi calculation. ..

Read it all.