Wow, compared to many other political discussions this has been a heavenly thread to read and obviously to discuss as well. There are so many things I am thinking about after I read all your posts but for a lack of background information on American politics I'll stick to one topic for now.
For the record: I don't agree with John McCain's motivations at all (and the only thing about him that I'm grateful about is his 'victory' over Huckabee) but not only is his estimate more realistic, it's also more likely to become true. The '100 years in Iraq' may have been a throwaway comment but it always takes time to cool down a boiling pot.
Obama on the other hand was talking about pulling troops out by 2009 and he wants the UN Security Councel to take over in Iraq but where do you think those peacekeeping troops would come from? Take Germany as a significant example because it's one of Europe's largest countries with 80m people - and only about 80k military members in total (cp. 1.5m in the US). Judging by those numbers it would be impossible to have any kind of military presence strong enough to keep control of the region. It looks like George Bush has condemned America to an unforseeable period of time to this situation and even now that the Iraq topic is not the most important one anymore to American citizens (think economy, health care instead) it won't stop knocking at your doors for a long time; the daily expenses of 720 million dollars will guarantee that.
This thread started with a topic of patriotism and symbols thereof. Maybe this whole discussion about flag pins had its effect, now Obama is wearing a
wristband given to him by the mother of a fallen soldier in Iraq. I don't believe that an item like this will portray more (or less) patriotism than any flag but a personal item with an emotional story to gossip about will always be more successful (to lure voters), don't you think so?
