I despise Marlowe's opinions as well but he has a point: handing over money is the wrong tactic. Criminal and terrorist gangs will be seeing this as a better source of extortion than just kidnapping native Iraqis. It is necessary to negotiate with terrorists but not to cave in so quickly. Instead, for terrorists, the perception should be that legitimate grievances were addressed, they are less active as a result and certainly not that someone's profiting. For criminals, they can only be found and arrested. In both cases, this is a long and difficult process and there are going to be casualties.

Invading Iraq was the wrong idea in the first place but now that we're there, we have to see it through to the bitter end, then get out. If we pull out now, the Iraqi police won't be ready and we'll get another Afghanistan.