I did my time in the military (Navy) and trained at Annapolis and I can tell you this: 20,000 is just an arbitrary bullshit number that somebody pulled out of his ass. It means nothing. It could be 30,000 or 19,000 or 50,000 or 100,000.
No amount of thousands will mean jack shit.
The bad guys can hold their breaths while we pour billions more into the bottomless Iraq pit. They could stop all the bombings today, watch us leave tomorrow, and then start right back up. The factions and the infighting will persist no matter what we do.
McCain and all the other "send more troop" guys are posturing for nothing more or less than political point-making politics.
The truth is, they don't know anything we don't know.
The truth is, they are full of crap.