"If you don't want the UN to get involved, more US soldiers will and more will die and the US will feel the full blunt of the humiliation, rather than the international community."

Have UN members met the number of troops they pledged for Afghanistan?
I think not.

"The problem is that Bush can't win unless there is democracy in Iraq but the number of mistakes, faults and misjudgements he committed lead us to think he simply has no reliable plan for democracy in that country.

Reasons:

Iraq won't accept democracy imposed by force; it's a matter of national pride. We've seen how quickly nationalism unites shi-ites to sunnis."

No people will accept a democracy imposed be force, but you need a country to have enough security so you can have a democracy which is not imposed by force [organized or non-organized gangs of thugs dictating the election results]. And what do you mean by a plan? Do you mean a general process or direction? Or do you mean a specific step by step American plan of how Iraqis will be organized- if the latter, then you are suggesting that Coalition should "impose a democracy by force".

The facts are that American and Coalition do have route/roadmap/plan of how to get to a Federal election. And the facts are that in many local and regional areas in Iraq, there is already a democracy- the Iraqis have already voted for local government. And getting Iraqis to establish democracy at the local level first, then moving to Federal election is part of the Coalition "general plan".

As far as I can tell, the only plan which is lacking is a plan to impose a specific plan that we expect the Iraqi to follow- in other words "impose a democracy by force". What we are doing in a general sense is bottom up, oppose to top down type management- and Iraqi are in the driver seat as far as this organizing- with Coalition function mainly encouraging and "allowing" this to occur.