Oh, the sheer level of win that would entail would be AMAZING.

Because that is something we can apparently afford for years at a time on the whim of the current President. Actually picking our next President is much more important, and would cost much less. Especially since, as Clodfobble pointed out, the public financing would likely be at a lower level than the spending has recently risen to.

Why are campaigns so expensive? TV ads that have dubious effect as far as winning over voters.

Arms race. Which might be less of a factor with public financing.

And pretending, rkzen, that you have no idea what victory is -- or that the "they" you so bitterly inveigh against, apparently on the grounds that they are Republicans and you are not (I can find no other motive for your particular grousing), have no idea either is so beyond belief as to venture into the ridiculous. Certainly I ridicule it.

Victory in the Iraqi theater: politically stable, prosperous, democratic Iraq, and I'm willing to be patient to get it. Develop Iraq towards the Barnettian Core, which is in no instance anywhere the work of a moment, but of a decade, minimum -- "the train engine can go no faster than the caboose." Defeat in the Iraqi theater is the loss of all the above. Continuing conflict in the Iraqi theater of war is the dispute over all the above.

It's the same for the Afghan theater of the war.

Victory in Iraq = Partition.

That's pretty much the best we can hope for. Now, how do we maintain the borders that cut through the Kurdish nation?

The Kurds have proven that they can take care of themselves. I say we put an American Brigade on the border with the Turks as a deterent. 60 minutes did a great piece on the Kurdish issue last night.

Yeah - I saw that too - it was very interesting!

Did they say anything new?

So I don't taint the stories - 60 minutes

I am not so sure that what they said was new news, only that the information they put out is NOT what most want to hear. That is that the Kurds have made it work. Until last week, they had not had a single car bomb or human bombing in 2 years. They have snapped their borders tight and the people are very happy, the economy is booming, new buildings are going up everywhere, and peace has broken out. Other than that, not much.

The Kurds may have done that but they are not in the middle of the war. It is much harder if not impossible for the middle of Iraq to become stabilized by themselves because there is so much fighting from each side and there are more than two sides. The more I hear about it the more it looks like it may turn into a chaotic anarchical state like Somalia is today.

And leaving without any of their oil/natural gas in Western hands, of course.
What if they don't want a "democracy", it just never ends?
You forget, my candidate is a republican.

I really doubt Iraqis could get their country back together if they tried, the interests are too conflicting. There is no single direction and if there is a single direction, an outside force will oppose it. If we leave, Iraq is going to become worse than Somalia. Yet, the inevitability of that is enormous.

Then the too oversimplified to actually consider moral issue comes in...
What is worse, shooting someone in the leg or leaving them there to die?

Then you have to consider the hundreds of other issues.