Those of us warning of disaster should the US pack up and leave Iraq to Iran's devices have implicitly, although perhaps not explicitly, counting on the American public to hold the Democrats and weak-kneed Republicans accountable for such irresponsibility.
Don't hold your breath.
The American public won't know. And if it knows, it won't care.
Right now, today, as our soldiers fight, the AP reports massacres that didn't occur and fails to report those that do. When we've left, when our attention has turned to someplace else, someplace of critical national security importance like, say, Belize, the MSM simply won't be around to report on Iraq. In fact, they're not there to report on Iraq now, since Reuters and the AP rely almost exclusively on local Arab stringers for their writing.
With Iraq reduced to a bad memory, with Americns no longer dying in attacks, and with the Presidential election considered much more interesting (heck, with Congressional hearings into the Bush administration much more interesting), murders and massacres in Iraq will barely break the A section, much less the front page.
And when they do, the notion that an American presence might have prevented them will never be mentioned, except to chide the Administration for not getting it right from day one, by way of criticizing those who supported the war from the beginning. Even were Iraq to descend into Vietnam-like catastrophe, or Sudan-like genocide, the MSM will both blame the chaos on us and claim that there's nothing we can do to prevent it.
At least, not until Americans start dying again. Here.