[lentulusgracchus]

I didn’t support Libya, bosnia, Kosova or nation building in iraq, so I was down on that by 2004, iirc. I always supported the troops AND GWBush’s authority to make the call. It was a mistake.

Your call is unduly pessimistic.

You do not give enough credit to:

• "Wicked might of the enemy", to protract our invasion into occupation and "nation-building" </off 60's liberal cant>
• Chinese interference, which persuaded Saddam to stay on in Iraq and try to fight a war of attrition
• Democratic bad faith and treachery (I think they always planned to backstab Bush in revenge for 2000, and to carry the 2004 election)
• Removal prewar of the WMD, for which there is plenty of evidence
• 'RatMedia hostility and deliberate refraction and distortion

Unless these unfavorable factors are accounted for, things naturally look like incompetence on Bush's part.

Notwithstanding all of which, the Surge still worked, requiring Obama to throw the war in broad daylight.

[xzins]

I have only one questyoion about anything working, LG.

If you had been a commander in iraq during bush’s 6 years , was there any point in time when you would have permitted your troops to walk into town to go to a restaurant?

[risen_feenix]

I appreciate your even-tempered post. /salute

Even if those were factors, and to some extent they no doubt were, they were dwarfed by the fact that Bush did not tell the truth about the true nature of Islam. He was the one who pushed Religion of Peace down America’s throat. We know that to be 100% false.

Knowing what we know today, if Saudi Arabia sank one of our Aircraft Carriers in the Gulf, would you send American troops in on the ground, expecting that all we needed to do was kill every member of the House of Saud, and elections would then make that a nation a Western style democracy, just with camels and kebabs? Or would you basically bomb it to shit from 30,00 feet and be done with it?