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Candidate disclaimer: I do not support any of the candidates.
Perspective:
What is today known as "Iraq" was decreed to be so, and borders drawn, by western colonialist-adventurers many many years ago for the convenience and benefit of Anglo-US business interests.
Saddam Hussein's "Baathist coup" in 1959 was a CIA project.
Until 1990, the US supported Saddam in all the things it now condemns him for having done.
When Saddam got uppity and decided he wanted a bigger slice of the Kuwait oil pie, the US got mad, and played with him for a while, loudly encouraging ragtag "opposition groups" to revolt, with promises to come in and do it to it once they got the thing going, then sitting back and watching Saddam slaughter them.
After destroying much of Iraq's infrastructure in the First Gulf Crusade, the US maintained sanctions on Iraq for 12 years. These sanctions had little effect on Saddam, but a devastating effect on the Iraqi people. The US then unilaterally (with poodle) declared "no-fly" zones in Iraq and drip-bombed them pretty much every week for years, and every day for about a year before the current invasion.
These "no-fly" zones were ostensibly to protect the Kurds. (Kurds who live in that part of Kurdistan currently called "Turkey" did not receive such protection. On the contrary - but that's a whole nother show...)
Whatever popularity Saddam Hussein enjoyed or enjoys today, in Iraq or elsewhere is a result of the perception that he stood/stands up to the US, that he was victimized by the US, that he defied the US.
Reality:
The US is currently occupying Iraq, engaged in active hostilities. Iraqis, regardless of their political persuasion, who oppose the occupation of their country and the slaughter of their countrymen, the seizing of their wives and children for "interrogation," the destruction of their homes, their crops, what little infrastructure they had managed to patch together despite the last 13 years of US state-sponsored terror, are considered "insurgents," "terrorists," "anti-coalition forces," "enemy."
Getting out of Iraq does not mean convincing soldiers from other countries to go there and join US soldiers in their activities in the region.
The candidates plans for Iraq differ very little from each other, and to be brutally frank, in terms of the reality for the Iraqi people, do not differ substantially from the status quo.
Having French soldiers, or Egyptian soldiers, or Fijian soldiers commit war crimes alongside US soldiers does not make the war crimes any less reprehensible, it does not make the victims any less dead.
What is going on in Iraq is an occupation, a prelude to colonization.
There is an almost universal belief, a bipartisan belief, that America knows best, that the Majority World flails helpless and tempest tos'd without the magnanimous and kindly Uncle Sam bending down to help his poor brown brother, so simple and childlike, poor thing, he is not ready for self determination, for "democracy."
It is so deeply ingrained that many very fine and upstanding people don't even know it's there.
The Majority World, however, is quite intimately and painfully aware that it is there, and there is a standing invitation for kindly Uncle Sam to lay down that burden.
Although "Iraq" may be a western creation, that part of the world has been in the civilization business a sight longer than Europe has, much less the US, a country that began its existence by destroying as much ancient civilization as it could.
But doesn't the US have a responsibility to clean up their mess?
You bet!
If the US really wants to clean up its mess, write a blank check to Red Cross/Red Crescent, every non-UN and non-US NGO in the world, let the dedicated professionals in those organizations help the Iraqi people halt the humanitarian catastrophe that the US has wrought in their country, and get on to the business of deciding for themselves, without "help" how THEY want their country (or countries) to be.
But getting out of Iraq means getting every last American out of there, every last American gun out of there, every last American oil operative out of there, and yes, the CIA and special forces and commercial soldiers and Mossad loaned executives, and leave only that that might be useful and productive.
It means unfreezing all that money and giving it to those same NGO's, and to the Iraqi people directly. It is theirs.
It means removing every single scrap of anything that might cause one dime of money from Iraqi oil to go, now or in the future, to any subsidiary of any US or UK entity.
That's what "getting out" means.
But what if the Iraqis decide on a government that I or my candidate doesn't like?
That is a possibility. It is almost a certainty that whatever they decide, it will mean a definite decrease in revenues for US energy and defense industries. It will also mean fewer deaths, American, Iraqi and otherwise.
You may not like the governments of many countries. They may not like yours. They may choose to change their government, in time. Just because you haven't doesn't mean they won't.
Now you may not agree with that. You may agree with your candidate, and that is fine. You may be fooled by thinking that having your candidate head up the Crusade, run the war, manage the occupation, implement the colonization, however you and he/she want to call it, will mean jackshit to the next Iraqi whose kid gets shot by some soldier from wherever who "thinks he is an insurgent," or to the next resistance fighter who comes home and finds that his wife and kids have been seized by some "coalition" gunmen to be "interrogated" to put pressure on him to go turn himself in to the crusaders in the hope that he will be allowed to take his kids' place there in the "interrogation chamber."
Those folks may have a different view.
On the plus side, if your candidate gets the nomination, that plan will be just dandy with that top 25% income tier who votes.
All the polls say that most US voters agree with getting more countries to fight the war (under US command, of course).
If your guy uses the right words, he might even beat bush.
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