President's speech tonight on troop withdrawal

[Florence]

How many do you think the President will withdraw from Afghanistan initially? How many do you think should be withdrawn and over what time frame?

I am anticipating 10,000 out by the end of this year. Then I would hope 50,000 out in 2012 and another 50,000 in 2013. And I sincerely hope that they are not simply moved from Afghanistan to Yemen or Somalia.

[Zigzagman]

Yes, the latest news is that Obama will be bringing home 5000 followed by an additional 5000 by years end. Why so few - well, you wouldn't want to disrupt the flow of money taxpayer dollar to all of the varied interest of contractors and our war corporations. We have a commitment, right?

With these 10,000 that would still leave 20,000 of just the surge troops that were sent in 2010. We now have an estimated 100,000 troops and who knows how many contractors. We are spending now about 10B a month in this nation building effort. I agree with GOP presidential candidate John Huntsman, "What we need now is a healthy dose of nation-building here at home".

Get ready for the typical war machine proponents to call any actions to reduce the military as "Isolationism". But the latest poll I read was that about 80% of the population is ready to end these stupid wars of choice.

Oh, and while we are at it, how about us finding the 6-18B dollar money that we somehow mysteriously lost in Iraq? I really do think we could find some use for that money at home. We seem to worry about the social engineering in this country but ignore the continuous stealing by private contractors and corporation but what else is new? Capitalism at it's finest.

Peace