Perhaps most of you are too young to recall this <link> a striking photo that encapsulated the last days of Saigon. Though an effort was made never forget that of the tens of thousands of former South Vietnamese employees of the State Department, CIA, U.S military, and countless armed forces officers and personnel at risk of communist reprisal in the northern two-thirds of the country abandoned to the communists, nothing is known.

And fortunately, that scene is not going to be re-enacted, considering the current situation on the ground. If youd like to question that, I'll be happy to set off a link blizzard to people on the ground there now, or have been in the last 4 months.

Sorry, Guys; but you won't be pinning a full-fledged defeat on a lame duck president in this instance, unless Nancy and Harry simply pull the money plug and let our troops founder.

Just a note of reality for Mike O: the events depicted in the linked photograph from Saigon took place in 1975, three years after the "end" of the war, and after the US had withdrawn all but a token force. They don't represent a defeat for the US military, just for the whole ridiculous policy that brought us the war.

Those events could not have taken place, of course, when the US military was present in Vietnam in numbers. Likewise, no such scene is possible in Bagdad now. But it's almost guaranteed if the US really withdrew. The only way to prevent it will be to keep 100,000 US troops in Iraq forever. Or to abandon any pretext of rebuilding Iraq and just kill them all and destroy the whole region (as others in the Fray have suggested.) Or to simply abandon the new US embassy in Bagdad and leave no presence at all, not even diplomats, who would need to fly out at the last minute. Take your choice.