There is much talk these days about what would happen were we to withdraw from Iraq. What is especially clear to me is that pundits and McCain tend to exaggerate. From all the information that I have gathered from 2005 to the present, it appears that when we withdraw, the Iranian-backed Mahdi militia and Bader Brigade will mobilize against al-Qaeda. The current U.S.-backed regime will kowtow to the Iranians even more, and the eventuality facing that regime will be a slow shift toward an Islamic theocracy. This, I believe, is not something that we can or even should prevent. Stability is more important to the Iraqis than democracy, but we are most likely preventing the very people that can eliminate al-Qaeda from doing just that. Our presence in Iraq, therefore, is most likely perpetuating instability. All the evidence that I have gathered seems to point to the fact that the Iranians and their surrogates are poised to fill in the vacuum when we depart. McCain and others seem to think that that is an untenable situation for the U.S., and maybe it is in some ways, but our invasion was supposed to somehow benefit the Iraqis. If we can do just that by leaving, then we will have actually accomplished more than we have since March 19, 2003.