From Bill Maher's latest show, he says:

MAHER: Once in 1968, when Cronkite said, you know, "The war is over," we stayed on another five years. All we got was more debt. And the Bush answer to this, "we should set a date to leave," he says, "Well, if you set a date, then the terrorists know they just have to outlast you by one day." Let me tell you something, you are never going to outlast insurgents in their own country. They will fight for a hundred years. A hundred – and it is a fundamental fallacy to think that we can outlast those insurgents.

Maher thinks we should get the hell out. Now. And I'd accept that if his premise, that we're basically fighting a widespread popular insurgence, is correct, then he's right.

But how do we know if this is right or not. The spate of beheadings is the work of Zarqawi's group. We know this for a fact because they post the videos on the web. Many car bombings and attacks have been linked to his group as well. Now Zarqawi is Jordanian, and he recently swore public allegiance to bin Laden (which should erase any doubts of that they are a subsidiary of al Qaeda). Would you call them "insurgents"?

And if a large portion of the violence is due to ex-Ba'athists and rebel clerics who want to take power themselves, would you call them "insurgents"?

So on the issue of whether or not we should withdraw from Iraq, doesn't it depend in great part on exactly who we're fighting in Iraq? If they really are insurgents, wouldn't Maher be correct in saying we should leave, since they will be almost impossible to defeat?