[Blue State Insurgent]

It was never our intention to defeat the enemy in a matter of weeks.

We wanted Iraq to serve as the sandbox for the enemy to come and play with us in.

Iraq is the enemy's quagmire and Rummy is nothing short of a genius.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"We wanted Iraq to serve as the sandbox for the enemy to come and play with us in."

I agree entirely. Strategically, it was and remains brilliant.



It also gives us a geographically central staging site for pacifying the region. And, conveniently, it results in Iran surrounded. It's a much more valuable position than our former site in Saudi Arabia. (Having said that, we should have left some operations intact in Saudi Arabia. Pulling all operations out was a propaganda victory for the Islamists, for whom U.S. presence in Saudi was an irritant.)