It's true, of course, that "residual force" isn't just a grand idea favored by press wankers, but also many presidential candidates. Without getting into the minutiae there is a difference between a residual force in neighboring relatively friendly countries (Kuwait) and a residual force sitting in the middle of the crossfire, but nonetheless the idea that we need to be sitting there just in case is a widely embraced idea.
Still, the media industrial complex has a great amount of power to determine what "serious" and "unserious" people advocate, simply by labeling people as "serious" and "unserious." Right now the "serious" position is that some sort of open-ended occupation of Iraq is inevitable, and anyone who suggests otherwise is a very silly person. In fact, they're probably the kind of very silly person who thought that this whole Iraq thing was a bad idea to begin with. Ridiculous!
But, yes, I would like the people who advocate this 50,000 forever model to actually spend a few seconds thinking about just what they imagine those troops spending their days doing.
