To the 26% of Americans who still think Bush is handling Iraq well, I'd pose a hypothetical. Whatever reasons you believe for the invasion (WMDs, vengeance, regional transformation), and assuming that achieving those goals is still plausible, what cost is too much? I ask the question because the Bush administration and remaining war endorsers have today stopped offering predictions altogether, having realized that they are about as bad at predicting results as I am at predicting the date for the launch of glassbead.net. In their place we get Bush saying things like, "don't criticize my New Plan before it's even had a chance to work!", as though somebody else were in charge for the last four years. I posed this question to the invasion apologists I know personally two years ago, and the general response was along the lines of, "let's give it another year, be patient." Somehow, I doubt that two years later the response would be different. This is the nature of true loyalty. And Bush's New Plan was supposed to outline specific goals and measurable results — it did not.

So, again, whatever you believe the war to be trying for, and assuming that it is achievable, when does the cost exceed the benefit, really? Is $1 trillion too much? 5,000 American soldiers? Discover Magazine this month has a good article about treatment of injured in Iraq: today, injured servicemen and women reach the best medical care available in only 13 hours, saving their lives in many cases with even near-total brain damage. The same level of care during the Vietnam war took an average of 15 days. Yes, fewer are dying in Iraq than Vietnam. But did you know that no other war in the history of the United States has created so many seriously disabled veterans? The Pentagon doesn't release hard casualty numbers for security reasons, but most estimates cite over 50,000 non-mortal American casualties to date, and VA sources estimates the number of TBI (traumatic brain injury) casualties at almost 10,000. That's ten-thousand major brain injuries, including one veteran close to me. Hawks will say you can't put a price on the freedom of Iraqis (and fail to figure in the at least 100,000 Iraqis); I say you can't put a price on American lives and incapacitations.

How much is too much? It's a personal question that many people still don't want to ask. But it's past time to ask. Watch the daily numbers from Iraq if you can stomach them. The only proper strategy, both in the interest in US lives but also in the interest of Iraq's stability (whatever chance there is of that) is simply to start to withdraw troops.

If you don't believe that (in spite of it not working to this point), then at least ask yourself how much is too much — time, cost, lives. Our countrymen are dying, being injured at astonishing rates, and our military is getting weaker by the day, as is our country's potential to prosecute actual defense operations, while terrorism around the world is higher than ever. Do you have a threshold, or are you, like Bush, willing to sacrifice our countrymen for goals that amount to a perpetual wait-and-see-what-happens?