From Thursday night’s Fox News All-Stars.

On Iraqi General Babaker Zebari wanting U.S. troops to stay longer:

The fact that he says they need us is important because it gives us leverage — finally. These people know what happens if you get deposed in this area. In 1958, there was a coup. The [Iraqi] prime minister was executed and then dragged through the streets and dismembered.
So they have a history of what happens if you can’t defend yourself. If the army chief of staff is saying they might need us — [Staying] a decade is ridiculous. It’s not going to happen. However, [if they] need us for an interim period of time, I think that allows us to say, OK, we might, for a short period, if — and here‘s where you exert the leverage — (a) you form a coalition government now and we tell them what we want – a coalition of Allawi, the centrist, and Maliki, who’s the current Shiite leader. And (b) we want you to help [defray] any cost. …
If we do need another half year or year or so, and that would stabilize Iraq — again: if we have a stable government — I think that would be something that would be worth considering. A hard date that’s arbitrary is dangerous in and of itself. …
One irony of the president shifting the focus and the energy onto Afghanistan out of Iraq is that the cost of success in Afghanistan is going to be a hell of a lot higher than the cost of success in Iraq where we are on the cusp of success — but we could lose it all if we draw down too quickly.