Despite the headlines that General Petraeus has made for anything remotely negative, the man did a hell of a job commanding Multi-National Forces - Iraq. In a nutshell, the troop increase decreased violence (note: an increase in forces does not equate to an increase in combat).

General Ordierno is faced with a few challanged. He needs to bring and end to the violence between tribes, as well as the violence toward foreign contractors. He also will be responsible for the continued training of Iraqi forces so they're better prepared to deal with future hostilities. He'll be doing allof this with far less troops.

Depending on who gets elected, the new Commander will have to adjust his strategy of leadership accordingly. How do you think the climate of the Iraq conflict will change if Obama is president, and vice versa with McCain.

Debate. Now.

And correlation does not imply causation.

To say that the "surge" decreased violence is a bit too simplistic; myriad other factors were involved.

I'm not sure how the climate will change depending on who gets elected, but I'm pretty sure that the election of McCain would have a detrimental effect on the war in Iraq. McCain is a bit out of touch with foreign policy, and is too much of a hawk for my liking.

I was trying to keep it as vague as possible without 1) losing people and 2) disclosing information that will land me in the brig.

General O is doing a good job of keeping up what Petraeus started, which is a wonderful thing. With a developing conflict in Pakistan and an unresolved conflict in Afghanistan, we certainly can't afford to escalate the tensions here in Iraq. Unfortunately, for the militia outside of the wire, they might take this opportunity to make a move. Surprisingly, Ramadan was extremely calm this year. This entire month, there hasn't been anything too extreme go down around here. A few bombings, some mortar fire and a couple firefights, but none of which got out of hand. They still may be testing the waters. I hate to say it, but terrorists have a pretty solid intelligence core.