Mike,

Personally, I think you are just too young, and are willing to give the powers that be in Washington too much credit. I'm of the age that my birth year was the last year of the draft lottery for Vietnam. We weren't actually drafted however.

Yet I did see the results from those returning and trying to blend back into society. It wasn't a pretty site.

I don't think there was any near the level of altrueism you are attributing to people over this war. There have been all kinds of theories proposed, from the neocons desire to create a democracy in the middle east, to GB focus on trying to upstage his father.

Vietnam clearly showed the fallacy of our government's getting involved in a war like this. There is no good that will come from this. The situation is not as bad as Vietnam became, but it is on the same path. Terrorist attacks are getting more vicious by the day.

I can more clearly see a day in our future when all soldiers are brought home and the discussions begin of how we got involved in such a mess, rather then a day of peace you invision.

>>If it was botched from the start, then I have no idea how to define a success in this case. Can you do that?
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>Of course.
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>Just like I can look at a set of requirements and somebody's attempt at implementing them in software.
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>I can scracth my head and say "why the hell did they do it that way?" and then try to track down all the personal background information on the comptuer programmer, to try to understand the way he thinks.
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>Or you could say "well, I know how it has to be done" and just do it.
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>So how to define success? I'd say stable democractic Iraqi and Afghani governments within a decade or two.
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>A success to you, it seems, would be an injurous blow to Bush, though I think he's already received it.
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>>>>Freed? From what, and into what? I somehow don't see the replacement of a dictatorship with a theocracy as liberation, regardless of the theocracy's prefix.
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>>>Ha.
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>>Exactly.
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>Do you honestly think that Iraqis have gained no freedoms since Saddam's rule?