RateItAll: The Opinion Network

Violence is not declining as of yet, firstly. Secondly, I don't seee Bush backing down from his "mandate" any time soon. I'll wait and see.

The current Iraqi situation is seemingly moving forward. Indeed, I disagree with the war in its entirety, and our president for his handling of pre-war intelligence, his anxious ambition to go into Iraq, and the initial excuses he gave the the American people. Iraq, as a country, is far from establishing a peaceful democracy, yet any step towards democracy is a good one. But, is democracy necessarily the answer? After all, "democratic" regimes in Latin/South America and SE Asia, have not been exactly stable. Sooner or later though, our brave troops will be completely out, coming home to a country that supports them and maybe not the politics behind it. Troops level will gradually decline in '06, (who knows how much, though?) and by the time we are out completely--whether Iraq becomes stable or not--they'll know that they won the "war" by achieving all the goals and missions set out for them. Accomplishing what no other single military in the world could achieve, and knowing that if Iraq destabilizes, that is was none of their fault (easier to say than do...I know). But our support for them must always be there...not support for the war, president, handling of the war...but our true, genuine support for the brave souls. Bless them all, and hope for peace.

Absolutely. Their elections recently have made a believer out of me. That was a helluva message spoken by these people. I would not put a hot time frame on it myself, but I believe the Iraquis will accomplish what they hope to with our help, and then believe me, I will be glad to get the hell out of there!!

This process has already begun. Our general troop level, which has held steady at around 160,000 for the past two and a half years will be below 140,000 by 12/31/06 and every liberal on RIA will deny it, defying the empirical evidence. To achieve US troop levels in the 70,000 to 80,000 range a number of circumstances must come together including a substantial and undeniable rejection by the Iraqi people of what the American (and other liberal) press calls "the insurgency, " which sounds like a group of Iraqi's who don't want democracy. The reality is that it is a group of mercenary and islamic fundamentalist terror experts who need the democracy to fail and who hate America nearly as much as American Liberals hate George W. Bush and are similarly un-constrained in their efforts to win. There are three reasons that this will happen. First, the percentage of Iraqis (around 80%) who voted in the last election. Second, the enormously successful efforts of the coalition military forces (including an enormous number of US servicemen and women) in rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, not that any American who gets his news from the American press would have any clue. Third, the single-minded determination (read and portrayed as stubborn, stupid bull-headedness by American Liberals, including the press) of George W. Bush.

Highly doubtful

As evidenced by what?

I don't think that will happen anytime soon, although I would love for that to happen. Most likely, it will be something that will die down slowly and the troops will one day come home. But I don't think Iraq will ever be the same again. It will always be a target for terrorism and I don't think it will ever be a good place to live anymore. The best we can do is probably stop the outright car bombings. This will be something which drags on, but the violence will die down and it will become more stable, but not by 2006.

I really hope this will happen. History shows us that it shall not. A piece of paper in the form of a constitution shall not change the habits and mores of thirty centuries in less than a year.

Quite possible given the relative success of this past election. Rumsfeld seems ro feel we will have a reduction on troops as Iraq's police forces and military become more stabilized.