As a Canadian looking at things from a distance, I would have gone about the inavasion of Iraq a litle differently. I fully supported the the United States in her efforts after 9-11, especially in light of her major allies, to my shame that includes Canada under those goddamn Liberals, abandoned her when it became apparent that there was some serious work that had to be done. The U.N., France and Russia, which America has helped on countless occasions, got up from the table and buggered off when the check arrived. But all that is history now. I would have gone it alone also had I been President, but I would've gone in with 500 thousand troops, not 160 thousand. Martial law should have declared immediately after the combat phase was over. Moreover, the Iraqi army was disbanded when all nco's should have been retained as it is they who could have formed the new Iraqi security forces. Then and there the insurgency could have been stopped before it started. Instead, Donald Rumsfeld bought a pig in a poke when Paul Wolfowitz said the war should be fought on a $1.98. Look at the mess now! My heart aches for all the coalition casulaties and their families. This war should have been over by now withe Iraqis looking after their own damn mess. I sincerely hope the US finds a way out of this quagmire soon. Your country"s blood must stop being spilled for the sake of these miserable Arabs, who will not thank you when it is all over.

God bless America. 

Yeah, we certainly have done that, haven't we?

Weren't we told about three years ago, "Mission Accomplished?" Why haven't the troops come home then?

Didn't Bush state in the 2000 campaign that we should not be engaged in nation building? What are we doing now?

Bush has displayed a tremendous lack of practical sense in dealing with the rebuilding of the Iraqi government.Bush is way too idealistic, he messed up thinking he could get a Democracy in Iraq. Bush should have put someone in Iraq who rules with an iron hand and gives anybody a "thumping" who gets out of line. Instead Bush and the Republicans took the "thumping" and looks like they may get a lot more "thumpings" in the ' 08 elections. That's the price you pay for not facing reality and wanting to live in a dream world. Bush has an 8th grader's concept of the world or worse.The big priority after establishing a no nonsense government in Iraq and looking for WMD's was to get our troops out and keep our men from dying in that God forsaken place, many lives have been foolishly wasted in such a sloppy plan that Bush has tried to implement.

The cold hard fact is that there has been MORE death of both our troops and Iraqi civilians since Bush bragged "Mission Accomplished".We devaststed the infrastructure,removed the government there,all with NO CLUE as to how to deal with the aftermath.This goes WAY beyond "irresponsible".Every death,mutilation and explosion is another sad reminder that we put our trust in the wrong hands.

This was clearly our biggest failure in this war. The mistake we made was essentially dismantling Iraqi civil society and leaving no discernable alternative, throwing parts of the country into effective anarchy. Newt Gingrich is right when he says that disempowering the local elites and bureaucracies created the insurgency that we're seeing today. I never had any problem with removing Saddam Hussein, especially if we had a better alternative ready to go and especially if he really indeed did pose a major security threat to our country.

The war early on became a Wilsonian struggle to bring "civilization" to Iraq; by dissolving old ties which bound that country together and remaking it according to our desires. We heard the argument that the swamp of the Middle East needed to be drained in order to get rid of terrorism. But you dont fight terrorism by completely dismantling a society and assume that it will all turn in our favor. As opposed, it could create more problems for us, as having an army in foreign soil for an extended period of time makes us a roaming target. Democracy is much more than just holding elections. When we dissolved the military and the bureaucracy in May 2003, we lost effective control of that country. That wasn't necessary, as much of the army outside the Republican guard wasn't political, as wasn't the bureaucracy. All what we had to do in Iraq was remove Saddam, stay for a few months while a new regime was being formed and then leave, with perhaps a few military advisors in the country left afterwards. That was the armies plan. But the civilians in the Pentagon, many of them ideological neo-conservatives, had a far out plan to impose a form of government on the Iraqi people that is foreign to them, that they never desired for to begin with. History is an evolutionary affair; revolutions, whatever their nature, rarely lead to their intended consequences. Look at the French Revolution: what started out as liberty, fraternity and egalitarianism became tyrannical. The neo-cons are right about something: freedom is indeed on the march, but its not on a roll. Societies have to develop into democracy, it cannot be imposed. Thinking any other way is philosophical extremism, which by the way is usually the result of ahistorical revolutions like this one in Iraq. In my opinion, this may put back the development of moderate democracies in the region by a generation.

Would there have been more political liberties in an Iraq free from Saddam Hussein? Very likely. The problem was that our people got too idealistic, too sure of themselves. They believe that we could effectively run a foreign country with little knowledge about its history or culture. That we dismissed the local Sheik's that have run that country for 1300 years as "irrelevant" tells you the kind of incompetence and hubris that our people have operated under. It's a tragedy in many respects because it simply didn't have to be. Had we handled the post-war operations right early on, we probably wouldn't be there today and Iraq would be a functioning society. Instead, we find an Iraq coming apart at the seams, an American foreign policy that is decidedly diminished and resurgent fundamentalism in the Middle East, especially in Iran and Lebanon. Iraq has our hands tied behind our backs, and there is little we can do to regain the advantage at the moment.

There was a sentence in the script in the Movie BraveHeart that I recall and I think applies here. we dont have to beat them, we just have to fight them!. He was referring to the British who at the time were oppressing the Scots in so many ways and had been for hundreds of years. What bully did you ever remember that just quit picking on you when you let them....none in my life time. I dont understand why this is so complicated. I am sad every day when I hear about those who are dying, but we as a race will die every day to keep our dreams alive in so many walks of life. I dont believe we will ever wipe out all of the terrorists...sure. But one slimebucket at a time will get the picture that freedom is not a pushover. Like all the bullies I knew as a kid, this one too will grow weary enough to Pause, to wait a little longer before he victimizes another human being. I call that a victory every time.

This isn't going to happen. We can fight them, we can protect ourselves from them, but we can't get rid of them. I and everyone else in the world wishes that we could, but it just can't ever be accomplished

This can never be done. What can be done is tying up these knuckleheads away from soft targets over here.

Terrorism will never be totally subdued,but lets be real...These are terrorists,not insurgents!They can not be dealt with like normal human beings.They are like animals.

You mean people didn't drop everything and immediately kiss our ass? Shocking. If you're one of these people that calls the insurgents 'animals' you ought to re-evaluate your feelings about the war- insurgents aren't animals but soldiers. An animal would have been easier to kill by now. . .

This is an interesting point. There are multiple ways of approaching it. You could opt to look at how the US is managing the short term response to insurgency, in the form of locating and capturing insurgents. The 'Bring 'em on' tactical initiatives, if you like. There, progress has been made. Some leaders have been captured. Some raids have been successful.. You could look at the medium term, i.e. the training of Iraqi forces. That is a mixed bag. I am not sure that that has been very successful. They certainly are not self-sufficient or anywhere near it, yet. However, what really counts are the long term measures to subdue the insurgency. Failure here is what causes the perpetuation of the insurgency, requiring more and more troops to deal with short term responses. Here military force has its limitations. An insurgent is, by definition, a person in a condition of revolt against a recognized government. So in other words, the insurgent does not identify himself with the government. The US has tried to help bring about democracy in Iraq. This is a positive initiative. The results are not yet clear; voter turnout is encouraging, though. However, the US is still in Iraq, with a massive troop presence, contractors, etc. and no plans to leave soon, or hand over military or economic power to an international body. There is no other nation whose presence more incites Islamic fundamentalists than the US (except, conceivably Israel). However unfounded the allegations made by leaders of the insurgency against the US may be, this continued presence implies that the true power in Iraq is not in the hands of the Iraqis, and this fact can be easily manipulated to encourage insurgency against the administration.

How about those insurgents who bombed the USS Cole or our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania? Did we create those insurgents too? Are we losing here- no way! Is the level of threat to Iraqi citizens high- absolutely. But the insurgency is not large nor is it made up of Iraqis- it's predominantly Sauds and Syrians. As we train the Iraqi citizens to police their nation they will take up more and more of the burden and years down the road will defeat this terrorist threat. Right now we're doing a fairly good job confining the threat while we train Iraq forces and they create the democratic institutions that will allow them to grow as a nation.

1). We created the insurgency? Out of thin air? Was it not these same murderers in whose name the World Trade Center was destroyed? No, WE created the insurgency. Whew. What would be the point of continuing a dialogue with someone who accords such demonic motivations and silly contentions to an effort where we put our young men and women's lives at risk? Separating this insurgency from the murdrers of 3,000 innocent Americans on 9/11/01, just to criticize Bush, is an exercise in mental gymnastics I'm not up to. Do you believe (can you possibly believe) that without this war effort the US mainland would not have been attacked again, probably by insurgents who were bolder and more destructive? I don't like this war but I do prefer to conduct it there rather than here. 2). And, we're losing this effort, according to the numbers? What on earth numbers could be cited to support such a claim. The number of innocent Iraqi's killed by suicide bombers in Iraq? 3). And we are failing? Compared to what? Kosovo? Mogadishu? Vietnam? WWII Germany? WWII Japan? No wonder we lost the Vietnam War.

We created the insurgency! Without the war and occupation there is no insurgency- so the best outcome is 0, assuming we eliminate every single insurgent.

The numbers would say that we are failing in this area.