24 September Washington Times commentary - Our Five Iraq Wars by James jay Carafano.

America has fought five wars in Iraq -- not merely one. And we've won or are winning four of them. Winning the last war, however, is all that counts. To cut and run now would leave America less safe than when we started.

War 1: Battling Saddam. The United States waged war in Iraq for one reason -- to remove Saddam from power. This was really a continuation of Desert Storm...

War 2: Combating chaos. Despite the scenes of rioting when the regime collapsed, America and its coalition partners managed to quickly avert a wide-scale humanitarian crisis...

War Three: Confronting al Qaeda. In the wake of the war, lacking any real success elsewhere in the world, transnational terrorists leaped into the vacuum in Iraq...

War 4: The Sunni insurgency. The Sunni minority in Iraq largely abstained from the political process established to form a legitimate government. Democracy went on without them...

War 5: Fighting the proxy war. Unfortunately for the United States, the wavering of the Sunni insurgency coincided with a decided increase in attacks by Shi'ite militias. These provocations have resulted in an increasingly cycle of retaliatory sectarian strikes between Sunnis and Shi'ites, as well as concerted efforts to kill more American soldiers using more deadly and accurate improvised explosive devices. This latest war may be the toughest to win because its principle authors are probably not inside Iraq. They are in Iran...