Rebrooku, please allow that people posting here write fast, nor formally. One could build an impressive cultural case about Arab civilization and acting strong. It is a fair idea to express, wether or not it was a basis for policy. It is anything but oxymoronic, and once again I can only repeat my morning prayers again.

Rebrooku: I agree with you! [Where is my heart medicine?] Yes, Iraq is the creation of British (and French) colonial policy. A nightmare and deliberately so. Not entirely unlike Vietnam (and French colonial policy). But Korea was wierd - altough a Japanese colony - the problem was an accident of history: the Russian occupation of half the country was not really related to Japan.

Uchita - IF the US went into Afghanistan - which allowed AQ an open operations base - it needed to have bases nearby. This made getting along with the regimes in power necessary. I have more problems with Pakistan than the Central Asian Republics. I think Pakistan is the big problem - the training ground of the terrorists was its madrassas before they went to military camps in Afghanistan - and it is Pakistan that gave (Chinese) bomb plans to other Arabs - witness the set turned in by Lybia. What have Centarl Asian Republics ever done on that scale? You cannot fight everyone at the same time - you must focus - and you need to have effective bases or you will not win.

Uchiita, now I am getting upset. This is not an unjust war. It is true there were inadequate numbers of occupation forces, particularly of certain skill types (mps, engineers, occupation government) - and they were available. It is true there were dreams of doing this cheap - and it is wiser to send in two divisions when you need two battalions (I refer to Lebanon in 1956) - it is not really more expensive to send too much - especially in the Arab world. But the war is justified. Iraq is the aggressor - it invaded Kuwait - and it failed to honor the armistice. It also financed and directly sent terrorists in several senses, including to the USA itself. And it was inhumane to its own people - for which I am willing to go to war - libertarian that I am. Ending such a regime is always just.

Our troops are quite willing to express themselves, especially to other soldiers, past or present. I never felt any problem being critical of President Johnson or his Vietnam Policy, a war which I volunteered to fight. [I think we should still impeach him, just to set the historical record strait]. And the troops are much more dismayed by the lack of support in the press, and on the left, then they are by even the mistakes of the administration.

Policy at the top influenced the prison only in a indirect sense: it could not have ever been regarded as a good idea to do such things. We made errors - and really big names like the SecState and COS Army were ignored. My suggestion to send state MPs was also ignored. [State troops are older, veterans and mainly retirees - very experienced and not at all easy for some civilian contractor to buffalo into breaking rules and laws]. They only belatedly cross trained other troops into MP work- meaning you get very inexperienced beginners. They were not getting intel, and they created an extra-legal special organization to get it. This didn't work for linguistic reasons, and the pressure for information made people desperate. But it is not really unusual for big burocracies not used to a situation to make mistakes of this kind, and no one wanted this particular outcome. It is not really very germane to why we are there, or where things will end up. I am a fanatic about legal rights of protected persons, and regarded as unreasonable by many: but that does not mean this should become the focus of the war. It is an error, surely, but not as bad as even one stray bomb hitting a marketplace. [Which, by the way, turned out to be a bomb deliberately blown up in a marketplace, rather than a bomb dropped - but the press didn't know at the time - and is too embarassed to say so now. The point is, the loss of life is more serious, whoever did it.]

Sork - good discussion - except for one point. You are quite wrong there is no prospect of return of the Baathist Arabs. This is not only possible, but may be probable, if we are vulnerable to political pressure (say Bush loses the election and the press presses for withdrawall). The fact is, the insurgency is led by mainly Baathist officers, and they are using classical methods of the regime - directed mainly at local targets. They hope to convince people to accept their rule again, and it is not clear they are failing to do that at this point.

“Iraq invaded Kuwait, got counterinvaded, and LOST the war on TERMS. It FAILED to honor those terms - so the proper recourse is to restart hostitlies. That is what an armistice means.” What has legalism got to do with rather or not this invasion and occupation is an error? The legalism stands as an argument as to whether or not it was an illegal invasion and occupation, but in no other way indicates anything useful here.

"Yes, she should spit in my face. For I am morally responsible for the policy of my government, which I support. " Interesting. The first time I have heard a conservative accept collective responsibility applying to themselves. I salute your honesty. "I am an East Asia specialist..." Then you might enjoy this post from another thread: RE:Touted National Intelligence Estimate Out of Date This Already Is a Civil War 9/23/2004 3:53:00 AM "We called them [the Communists] Bandits. They had nothing but a few old rusty rifles. We had guns, tanks and planes from America. We had 105 artillery, very good guns! I commanded them. Mao, he was just a librarian, studying Chinese ideas. I studied American ideas of fighting. I tried American way of fighting, I tried! [holding up both arms in a muscle man pose] I TRIED! [with a big grin] I LOSE!” - General Liu, after retiring to America to teach martial arts. - We call them "thugs", which they are, just like the commies WERE bandits. But it doesn't mean we will automatically win. It is dangerous to whine about it when we should be rethinking of what our real strengths and weaknesses are, and how we should be applying our force in that light. This is a civil war and there are “thousands” of thugs (insurgents). Has anyone considered, despite much Sunni protest about insecurity, that the number of thugs is just about the normal size of an army for a country the size of the Sunni population? So, why do we need to be occupying a colonial bastard of a country the way we are? The Iraqis have to come to their own equilibrium, by force or agreement. We didn’t need to occupy Kosovo, until after a rough equilibrium happened, and then with a much reduced peace keeping force. We know the occupation was desired by some influential neoconservative thinkers in order to put Iraqi oil production back on the market. The political strategists that drummed up the invasion made that clear in their writings before the war. Unfortunately, all that has happened is a reduction of supply and a highlighting for terrorists of the vulnerability of world oil production and distribution.

"Rebrooku, you are apparently listening to partisan progaganda. There are a large number of wealthy who support leftist political causes, and a significant number of corporations who fund both left and right." That's why I registered as an independent. I don't by the dialectical arguments of either the Left or the Right. That said, it is the ideology of the Right that is driving this war.