We Might Lose, or We Already Lost?

I was talking with my roomate about Iraq and about how anytime someone says we should get out of Iraq, some republican (VP?) says that person is "aiding the terrorists". His logic is, if we say we're going to pull out, we're admiting defeat, allowing us to lose, and thus, the terrorists win, so, in some sense, we did aid the terrorists.

I guess the way I see it is, in many ways, we've already lost. We didn't get defeated, we defeated ourselves. We lost the day we set foot in Iraq. We lost when we didn't plan for the peace. We lost when we were wrong about WMD. We lost when we didn't secure Afghanistan. We lost when we claimed "mission complete".

Just because there is no good way out doesn't mean staying is good either. It's a lose/lose situation that the current administration got us into that the next administration will either continue to pass the buck of acceptence of our selve defeat onto, or will take the blame for the inevitable bad outcome.

I may be wrong, in fact, I hope I am...but I doubt it.