I must not have been paying attention. Ten to twenty years before Iraq is a viable democracy, a model democracy for the Middle East. OK. Where were we warned it would be 10 to 20 years? Since you presumably were paying attention, you can undoubtedly tell me.

Obviously we're talking about how long there will be US troops on the ground, how long before they do not need US "security" for their puppet regimes, that sort of thing.

By the way, does that qualify as a quagmire, considering Vietnam lasted about 13 years?

The numbers I recall being batted around, the polls, the politicians, the military folks, were from one to three years. Nowhere did I see the ten to twenty years which now just blithely slips off your keyboard and about which you are so sure, saying I just wasn't paying attention.

Do you have a sense of having been lied to, at all? Or are you defining victory by just extending the time, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel?

Do you buy into the nonsense that every time they hit us hard the commanders on the scene or Rumsfeld/Cheney/bush say they are desperate, last-gasping? Do you ever get tired of hearing that?

I'll be interested to see how you explain the 10 to 20 years, though, that I missed. I think you'll ignore this, or dissemble, or argue with a minor point, such as Vietnam lasting 12 years, 9 months as judged by the President's Commission on Dates and Times. It looked like 13years, you will say, but the first 3 months were funded by AID and returnable pop bottles, and therefore doesn't count against the time official involvement counted. Or somesuch.

Arf