Wow, Cody!

Hard to remember when or if I've read a more thought out, well written, intelligent post. Thank you!!! 

If this war truly was a mistake, yes, Bush, et al. should it admit it, but the words "mistake" and "sorry" simply aren't in his vocabulary. I happen to believe in my gut that this war wasn't at all a mistake, that he came to office with a goal of war with Iraq, and all he needed was a reason, real or invented. One would think that war with Afghanistan, which WAS associated with 9/11, would have been a more logical place to concentrate. But nobody in Afghanistan tried to assassinate Dubya's daddy in the last 1-1/2 decades. To my knowledge, neither did any other country. I've read enough documentation on this from Dubya's former biographer to be steadfast in my belief.

This is long from being over. It wouldn't surprise me if America (Bush) is held to have waged an illegal war. And even if we fix everything we broke in Iraq in the form of restoring their electricity, rebuilding the homes we've demolished, fixing the drinking water so it's safe again, we will never be able to bring their loved ones back. I believe history will prove to be very harsh on this totally unjustified war and this president, even if America isn’t taken to trial for it. We are doing the exact same thing in Iraq what we fought the Communists for doing in Vietnam: forcing our way of life and political system on them whether they want it or not. Is it so hard to understand why anyone would fight tooth and nail against the occupation of their country by a country they view as inherently evil? We have become the common-day "communists" to many of these people. What would we, as individual citizens, do if suddenly bombs were coming down in America, killing our families, turning our towns into rubble, taking away our electricity, contaminating our drinking water -- all because some Mideastern "president" didn't like the way that Bush ran sovereign America and believed he was "saving" us from Bush? Take a good look at what's happening in this country today. Take a good look at our crime rate, how pregnant women and children are being brutally abused and murdered on an alarmingly frequent basis and then tell me why Iraqis might not want to be just like us.

The war on terror is like the war on cancer. Its failure or success is directly related to who profits from it (in my opinion). A sudden, aggressive "attack" on skin cancer resulting in the death of a few obvious, readily visible cells doesn't mean that the war has been won on colon and all other forms of occult cancers.

Also, experts recommend that people should take certain precautionary steps in their everyday living to reduce the risk of cancer. Apply this to the war on terror, and it means that the first thing we should have done is make sure our American "body" was free of "toxins" that would encourage the growth of foreign and deadly "cells." There are a multitude of things we should have done here first (other than cleaning up our own back yard before we try to fix someone else's). The one thing that comes to mind immediately is our border security. Bush doesn't care enough to secure our borders from these foreign deadly cells. These "cancers" can also access our rail and subway systems with relative ease, and as London is well aware of, this "cancer" is spreading throughout the entire world, possibly because of (and not despite) the war in Iraq.

You were dead on when you said we are fighting this war on their terms. They are holding all the cards and the control. They don’t care about Geneva Convention rules of combat. Every day, our soldiers fight to stay alive in Iraq, never knowing literally from one split second to the next whether they will survive. Every day, the terrorists fight to die in Iraq. They know for sure that this is their last day on earth because they hold the cards, and that’s their plan. I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like for a soldier in Iraq, and I’m ashamed that my country would so easily squander their lives like this.

To all the Bush and Rush hero worshipers out there: Just wait until IEDs and car bombs and suicide bombers in America is as everday an occurrence as it is in Iraq. Then tell me again how all this death and destruction in Iraq was even remotely worth it.

Thanks again for your post.  It really moved me, and unfortunately, my post ran a lot longer than I had planned.  I apologize for that.