>>>Are you overlooking the fact that the U.S. seemed to think the 'war' would be over in a week or two and the Iraqui people would welcome their saviours with open arms?
>>>
>>
>>Not sure how that is germane to the point of whether 'democratizing' was a war aim, but ok :
>
>I was responding to your statement that if oil was the aim, then it was an incompetent victory since gas prices are so much higher now than they were. And I meant the U.S. administration.
>
>Since the U.S. is bogged down in a quagmire (another vietnam) and the war has yielded about 33,000 U.S. casualties (ok, so it hasn't reached 100,000 yet). Maybe then there is some truth to the oil issue. If the U.S. simply took over the oil fields now, all it would do it prove the naysayers right. If the war had taken a couple of weeks like the administration hoped, it would have been a very different story. They'd have their flow of oil and nobody would be talking about it any longer.
>
>As far as the war having been incompetently handled, well, we all have our own points of view.
>
But "the War" was over in a couple weeks. the problem was post-war expectations and aims. A war for oil would have made a lot more sense and turned a profit.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
