>>>>>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.
>
>If the war was over in a couple of weeks, why is everybody still shooting at each other? You figure Bush saying 'Mission accomplished' meant th
e war was over?

No, I figure mission was accomplished when Saddam's regime was overthrown. That much was true. At that point, the Iraqis really did have a chance to create a new and better life - but of course a new and better life wasn't on the agenda of those who didn't give a damn about anything other than expanding Shiite or Sunni power, making life difficult for the American forces or personally profiting from the chaos. Iraq was a political fiction in a world that is tribal first. Most Iraqis were not consulted, but they were used to that. And had they been consulted it is unlikely anybody would have decided on a unified country with a liberal democracy.

Again, that should have been planned for and is certainly the cultural reality of the region. But the war didn't go on because we wanted to see how many Iraqis we could kill or because it is just such a fun place to be. And, unfortunately, it wasn't because oil went to $10 a barrel. (makes you long for the days when you could invade, pillage, throw the wenches over your shoulder and head back to the long ships )

A bungle, no doubt, but the war and the occupation really are separate issues. I thought the war - at least in some form - was necessary given that we obviously weren't going to put proper resources into my first choice - doing whatever it took to subvert Saddam and replace him with a vicious sob who was *our* vicious sob - but if I had any idea the follow up was so completely ill-conceived or clueless I would have opted for just sitting off shore and lobbing TOW missiles at anyplace we thought he might be until we got lucky - sort of submarine based whack-a-mole.