It's over. One does not win the hearts and minds in an occupied country with Sceptres.

One does not win hearts and minds by creating more enemies than one kills.

And this is just the start. US tactics have unified the Muslims, and are alienating the Kurds. As soon as they have neutralized the US, they'll go after each other.

It takes a Stalin, Tito, or Hussein to hold those countries together. The atrocities committed by Hussein were the result of a civil war. To see how bloody those are read American history.

It's a mess, an expensive mess, a mess with no exit strategy except bailing out after Halliburton and Bechtel have looted the place, and that is all painfully obvious. And Americans, good Americans, trusting Americans, are dying so that can happen.

The folks who say they don't believe that have turned their minds into pretzels.

What happened to the ideas that Iraqi oil would pay for reconstruction, that a democracy would be established in short order, and all would live happily ever after? There has been, you know, a regime change. That was what we were after, a regime change.

Arf