Devils Horse,

Sorry, but you still have your wars confused. It has been shown that Al Queda and Sadam were not allies, Al Queda was not in Iraq prior to the Iraq war, and the only thing that Sadam and Al Queda had in common was a dislike of Americans. Bush and co were rather disingenous when they miss lead the public into thinking that Iraq was somehow responsible for 9-11. In the months leading upto the Iraq war, Bush would rarely mention one without the other. By the time we went into Iraq, 48% of Americans thought that Iraq was either behind the attacks or played a major role in them. It was not until the months leading up to the last election that Bush publically stated that Iraq had no part in 9-11. There are still Americans to this day that believe Iraq was partly behind 9-11.

Al Queda were based in Afganistan. The Taliban (ruled Afganistan at the time) were supporters of Al Queda. Many in Afganistan did not like the Taliban (and still don't). We are not fighting that whole country, just a small fraction. You don't have to "kill every man in the country", just Al Queda and Taliban. Rebuild the infastructure, schools, hospitals, etc, and you'll win the hearts of the people there. Once Al Queda/Taliban are out and the country is stable, Mission Accomplished. Using our resources elsewhere, and shifting our focus was foolhardy.

Iraq was for completely different reasons (WMD, iminent threat, he tried to kill my daddy, remove a brutal dictator, bring democracy, or whatever the reason of the month was-yeah, and I though Kerry was supoosed to be Mr Flip Flop), though we'll probably never know the real reasons that we are there. I have no doubt that Iraqis are much better off without Sadam dead and gone. If that country can be secured, the people will be much better off than they were before. My disagreement with all this is that I don't believe Iraq was the threat they were made out to be (sorry, but we have some **** good people in the service, no one is a match for them) and that it was not in America's best interest to start that war. Think about it, Iran and Iraq basically kept each other in check. Remove one, you now have a void and the region is less stable. The loss of American lives and $12B a month, not to mention loosing focus on the real enemy in Afganistan, is just not worth it.


"we pull out on the Iraqis it'll be disastrous. Iran will most likely take the country and our soldiers will have died for nothing. We've disarmed Iraq for the most part, and they won't stand a chance on their own for quite a while yet. How long I don't know, but longer than the American public has the stomach for."

I actually agree with you on this. While things are rather messy over there now, I'm not convinced that it is in our best interest to pull out immediately. I don't agree with us being there in the first place, but now that we've started the mess, we gotta clean it up. Bush and co basically bungled this from the get go. Hopefully whoever is commander in chief next can fix it. Obama and Clinton may talk about pulling out, but I believe that once they are in office, they'll soon see that it is not as easy as it may look on paper.

Andrew