Glad you posted this. Up to now, I was never sure I had any disagreement with you.

I don't believe we have any right to unilaterally occupying other countries, no matter how evil their leaders are or how oppressed their people are. I do believe we (including myself) felt we were justified in invading Iraq because we sincerely felt they were secretly preparing weapons to be used against us and flaunting attempts by the international community to get at the truth. We also felt they were collaborating actively with Al-Quaeda. This turned out to be false, but I don't think we deliberately concocted the story to give us an excuse to invade. At least, I hope not. At any rate, at that time, I supported the invasion completely.

I too supported the invasion but I was never totally sold on WMD as a valid reason. The collaboration was de facto but perhaps not direct. I saw the invasion as an opportunity to replace an oppressive regime with a more democratic and hopefully secular government that would set an example for the middle east. Iraq was a perfect choice with it's relatively high level of education and the resources to be a rich nation.

My mistake was trusting that we had a plan in place that would succeed in the neccessary time frame. Knowing what I know now I would not have supported invasion.

We need to get out now, and if Iraq and the mideast erupt into conflict and chaos, then so be it. Again, from a purely practical and cynical point of view, as long as they are fighting each other they will not be able to threaten us and our allies. After the dust settles, we will be faced with at most one opponent, and we have everything we need to deal with one, clearly identified and localized opponent. And this time he'll know we are ready to do so.

I do not agree with this. You seem to believe that Islamic nations would turn on each other and as a result weaken themselves or if not that there would be some advantage of facing a united Islamic state. I believe that left on their own they would quickly resolve into a dangerous alliance of Islamic states, particularly Iraq and Iran.

I think we have to stick it out but we should do things to harden our position there and limit our exposure on the ground. There may be a time when I favor total withdrawal. I supported withdrawal from VN but only after both parties proved that there was no cogent strategy.

Looking back you can see many reasons for our lack of success in Iraq. A big factor was the absence of any leader that the country could rally around. Too bad they didn't have an exiled King like Afghanistan. That would have at least been something. We should have done a better job of establishing an icon.

We probably missed a chance at some time to turn Iraq and Sadaam into a client state. In hindsight we would have been better off doing whatever we needed to do to control him and moderate him vs taking him down with no one waiting to pick up the pieces