> when things finally go completely blooey, probably around 2011, we'll leave
> with the helicopters lifting off the embassy roof.
It's going to be much sooner than that. The lethality of the insurgency is astounding -- a meatgrinder inflicting 1,000 casualties per month on US forces alone, and probably several times that on the local puppet army. And it's only going to get worse:
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=42890&archive=true
-- DRR