Marcellinus:

One thing we can say with certainty: Iraq is not a War Zone.

Instead, it is a country with fundamental internal challenges to be resolved, and by a potentially messy process. Is that materially different than if we left immediately?

The underlying conflicts over the past decades (not just our period) were embedded, and would have, under any scenario, led to a "rebalancing" with the potential for violent retributions among many factions with legitimate grievances.

Behind it all, all of the ingredients are available for great prosperity under many alternative scenarios. That same list of ingredients, however existed in the 1980s and 1990s.

There is no assurance of a positive outcome but many of us who invested ourselves there, and lost comrades in the effort, hope for a safe and prosperous future for the many generous and hard-pressed Iraqi people we came to know well.

My position: Their future, whatever it may be, was deferred by any further major US presence. I was sent there as part of the mission to get us out, so my mission will shortly be accomplished.

Friday is a day when many Iraqis are being called to mass protests over very serious failures within the system. I would like nothing better than for Mr. Maliki to actually join the protesters in legitimately asking the hard-questions: How are we, as Iraqis, going to get beyond all this?