instead, our ambassador on the ground said, no, malawki is the guy, we have to back him. a deal was caught in iran, and, you know, the equivalent of the smoke filled room in iran, deal in which the officer of the mother-daughter, oms, the party, the holding, supported malaki for another term, and malili was sidelined. what did the sue gnus learn? no matter if we win or not, it does not matter because the next prime minister is decided in washington. we're going to be left out of the process. this is the reason why no one would support the extension of the u.s. forces in iraq the next year because what good were we? we were supporting the other side. >> what our reasoning? assuming it was not completely iran's fault, thought he was a good al and best hope. i think the stable iraq going forward was a system in which democratic rules and rule of law was suspected. it was not. >> as indicated, back to the situation we were back in 2008 with 8,000 deaths, civilian deaths every year, and, obviously, the number of could go up, 35,000, whatever it was in 2006, but, really, the wr