>>Exactly who has the US in which kind of crosshairs? There is no country or combination of countries that can realistically cause the US to cease to exist. Russia might me able to lob off some nukes, but the superior US ballistic missle firepower would crush it. The Brits are the next biggest power. They have difficultly sending approximately 10K troops to Iraq. The US has more military personal in England than that. China... they don't even have a high seas navy and can't project their military power outside of their region.
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>The jihadists have made it plain that they consider the US to be the enemy, and they have already hit us once.

The number of people that died in the 9/11 attacks was 2,792. Going after Afghanistan who at the time harboured Bin Laden made obvious and direct sense. Going into Iraq which was a secular state, that didn't not harbour Jihadists and had no connection to the terrorst attacks has cost 2000 lives. Needlessly. If the US stays much longer, the war in Iraq will be more deadly the 9/11. If you seriously want to save American lives, then start insisting that US pulls out of Iraq.

Now that the US is in Iraq, there are:
- terrorists
- kidnappers
- regional resistance fighters
- jihadists

These were not there before.