The Bush - Murtha Political Spectrum on Iraq

John Murtha - a PA democrat, has turned from an unknown politician to an American (and international) political celebrity. Murtha is the forerunner of the 'cut and run' approach in Iraq - which basically provides a short time frame to get out and give over the reins to the Iraqis. Bush's approach is that we must stay until it is over - which translates into ensuring the Iraqis can stand on their own two feet and ensuring that the threat to the US and our allies has been decimated. In Bush's fifth state of the union address, Bush again mentioned Iraq, labeled it as one of the front lines in the war on terror, and that there is still a lot of work to do. Murtha responded to Bush's fifth state of the union - regarding the Iraq situation.

His argument is basically broken down as such:
1) The US invaded Iraq to overthrow an evil and threatening regime. This mission has been accomplished.
2) Iraq is not the center of the war on terror and Al Qaida has a small presence, which will disappear, once the US pulls out.
3) The Iraqis do not want us there and will get along better without us.
4) The US military is good at destroying, not building.
5) We must allocate our monetary and military resources towards the real global war on terror and other domestic issues (like Katrina).

Bush's argument for staying indefinitely is more or less the following:
1) Iraq represents one of the front lines of the global war on terror.
2) We cannot leave Iraq without ensuring that the people can sustain the country without the US. Even if the polls show that the Iraqis do not want us there, we cannot respond to that by leaving and placing the population in a terrible reality.
3) We can only leave once the Iraqi government is self-sustainable and the Iraqi security forces are self sustainable. This is far from reality today.

In my opinion, it seems that both Bush and Murtha (and mostly everyone in between) were on the exact same page during the invasion of Iraq. The question was not to invade or not; it was whether the US should only invade with larger allied forces. But every law maker identified Iraq as a threat. (I am putting aside the useless democratic bickering on the level and accuracy of intelligence received, since clearly they had access if requested).

Now that we have overthrown Saddam; destroyed most of the country; acted on false US, UK, Israeli, French, German, Russian, etc. intelligence; and realized that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - what should the US do? In other words, if we knew then (before we invaded) what we know now (no WMDs), Bush and Murtha would not have invaded. So how should the US handle the damage control? That seems to be the disagreement.

I am frankly not sure which way is best, but I do respect Murtha's general opinion, and I do respect Bush's general opinion. What I do not respect are the democrats like Hillary, Kerry and many others that have only criticized Bush and really have no idea how to do it better. At least Murtha criticizes with a plan.