When should the US get out of Iraq?

Below is a series of interviews by Terry Gross, in which she asks her guests when and how should the US get out of Iraq.  I think that Kanan Makiya gave the best answers.  I also like Journalist Lawrence Wright's response: we should get out of Iraq when the Iraqis want the US to leave, and Iraqis do want the US to leave, but not now.  Thanks Datta for sending me the link.

Iraq: What Next for the U.S.?

In this wide-ranging Fresh Air series on the future of the Iraq occupation, Terry Gross talks to military leaders, prominent Iraqis, journalists and policy analysts — asking when America should get out of Iraq and how we should go about doing it.

Ex-Diplomat Lawrence Wilkerson

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson was chief of staff for former Secretary of State Colin Powell; he became an outspoken critic of the Bush administration after leaving the State Department in January 2005.

'Weekly Standard' Editor William Kristol

Editor and cofounder of the conservative Washington-based political magazine, The Weekly Standard, and an opinion columnist for The New York Times, William Kristol is a neoconservative voice on the Iraq war; he was among those who advocated for the U.S. to remove Saddam Hussein from power before Sept. 11, 2001.

Author and Journalist Lawrence Wright

Lawrence Wright is an author, screenwriter, playwright and a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. He sits on the Council on Foreign Relations, and he won a Pulitzer Prize for his book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 .

Iraqi Women's-Rights Activist Yanar Mohammed

Baghdad-born activist Yanar Mohammed directs the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq. She left Iraq in 1993, but since 2003, she has divided her time between her home country and her home in Canada. Mohammed's organization works to stop atrocities against Iraqi women and defend their rights; her activism has made her the target of death threats.

Defense Analyst Carl Conetta

Carl Conetta co-directs the Project on Defense Alternatives, a defense-policy think tank. Earlier, he was a research fellow at the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies; he served for three years as editor of their journal, Defense and Disarmament Alternatives, and of the Arms Control Reporter.

U.S. Army Lt. Col. John Nagl

Lt. Col. John Nagl commands the 1st Battalion, 34th Armor at Fort Riley, Kan. He served in Operation Desert Storm and was the operations officer of a tank battalion task force in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He helped author the Army's Counterinsurgency Field Manual.

Former Iraqi Official Ali A. Allawi

Ali Allawi served as minister of trade and minister of defense under the Interim Iraqi Governing Council from 2003 to '04, then was minister of finance in the Iraqi Transitional Government between 2005 and '06. He teaches at Oxford University and is author of The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace.

Former U.S. Ambassador Peter Galbraith

A former U.S. ambassador to Croatia and a senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Peter Galbraith is author of The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End .

Professor Kanan Makiya

Iraqi-born professor Kanan Makiya teaches Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at Brandeis University, outside Boston. He is one of the leading Arab intellectuals who called for the removal of Saddam Hussein; he also advised the Bush administration before the invasion of Iraq.

Retired British Army Gen. Sir Michael Rose

Gen. Sir Michael Rose was best known as the commander of the U.N. Protection Force in Bosnia in the 1990s. In 2006, he called for the impeachment of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair for leading England into war in Iraq under false pretenses.