Before the war, I made precisely this point...that if even a small percentage of of the population chose to engage in terrorism we would end up with a quagmire not too terribly different than what we have had going on for decades between the Israelis and the Palestinians - a constant and endless tit-for-tat violence that would cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars. That is precisely what we have now. It was naive for the Bush administration or any one to think otherwise.

The fact is, we are in this for the regrettable long haul...for no good reason. We have injected ourselves in the middle of a perpetual middle-east conflict. There is no light at the end of this tunnel.