really a steel rod through the back of the iraqi political system. you already see the iraqi government potentially falling apartment you could see a return of sectarian violence much sooner than anyone expected. i think this is the obama administration for political reasons wanting to get out no matter what. if they wanted to renew that deal wit with the iraqis and were really desperate to do it the president and the vice president could have worked at it real hard. they didn t. joe biden said last week that even if the rerack keys asked us to sen to keep 20,000 troops there they wouldn t have i don t. we couldn t stay there. our troops wouldn t get immunity. this is the bush timeline. jon: i want alan to look at glass half full scenario for just a moment. alan nine years ago you had a dictator who was putting his own people through meat grinders, literally. was gassing his own people.
bush did. this is a gradual scale down of the war. we are out of there because we could not get the immunity for our troops. this was the bush timeline. we continue stay even if president obama wanted us to. we continue get immunity to protect our forces from possible legal action. jon: rich, focusing on the coverage, again the media seemed to be stressing the uncertainties that lie ahead, and the constant arguments that this war created. jon, i think that is appropriate. obviously it was a devisive war and i think the hand wringing unfortunately is appropriate. we are going to have an argument over this war whether it was misconceived from the beginning or thrown away at the end of the i tend to agree with the latter. i really fear the consequences of what we re going to see in iraq. our continued presence there, even at a much reduced level was