Excuse me Larry, but an article written almost 60 years about the post-war occupation and reconstruction of defeated nazi-Germany has virtually no relevance to the current malaise in Iraq. Why some folks insist on drawing such useless comparisons is beyond me. For one thing, the Germans didn't recruit suicide bombers.

You will recall that prior to the Iraq war I stated here that we could expect to lose hundreds of American soldiers in this reckless conflilct. I noted that there were 22 million Iraqis and all it would take would be a very small percentage of the population to wreak havoc. I predicted that Iraq would come to look very much like the persistent violence we observe in Israel. That's exactly what's taking place there now. That's precisely why I supported continuing to rely upon U.N. sanctions and inspections to contain Saddam and prevent him from becoming a threat, rather than going to an unprecented pre-emptive war opposed by most of the international community.

Its not that we "botched the occupation." Its that we botched the foreign policy. We should have never started this war in the first place. That's the problem here.

That being said. We cannot afford to "botch the occupation." Our only exit strategy is to succeed in bringing peace and stability to Iraq. But, given how they "botched the foreign policy" in the first place, I have virtually no confidence that the current administration knows how to avoid "botching the occupation." We are going to continue to lose hundreds of American lives and spend hundreds of billions of dollars in a god forsaken little desert country whose citizens didn't lift a finger to conduct their own regime change.

If it were earlier in Mr. Bush's administration, I'd be asking to impeach him for lying to the American people about his non-existent pretext for going to war and murdering thousands if innocent Iraqi civilians. I can only hope now that the American publuc will not allow this jerk a second term.