what do you expect American involvement in Iraq to look like in 18 months?

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Barring Bush waking up or the democrats doing something as foolish as pulling the plug completely - thing will look very similar as they do today. The result of that will be the election of a President that will pull the plug.

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So no one thinks that a handful of congressional Republicans will team up with congressional Dems to threaten to pull the plug, and force Bush to scale back the mission and withdraw a significant number of the troops?

It could happen - but what would be the result of that? It's not the scale of the mission that is the problem - the goal of the mission is the problem. If they scale this back without changing the goal - the region is screwed.

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Let's just say say I hope we change course in the next 18 months to something that isn't a pipe dream.

If we don't - what do you think the chances are that the plug will be pulled on the whole thing?