MAJ Strickland I share your sense of anger and frustration, and like most of us, I will do everything possible in my limited power as a citizen and soldier to prevent decisions like the ones that led us into this convoluted mess from being made in the future.

However, how can we really influence policy when you have a voting public that is glued to FOX or some other some other bias news program for their information on policy making? Six pack Joe thinks it is a cool idea to go kick someone's butt, especially when he doesn't have to do it. Let's face it, a number of educated and experienced people without political agendas spoke out and gave the decision makers an accurate prediction of the consequences of going into Iraq. They were ignored, thus there were no realistic plans implemented to mitigate what should have been the anticipated problems. You're right that was and remains unacceptable.

My point about water under the bridge is not meant to dismiss the mistakes made my folks that should have known better, but simply to point out that we can't go back in a time machine and change history.

I'm not arguing whether we should have going into Iraq or not, since that is a political argument and not the purpose of this site. My argument is that our efforts were very poorly planned, and this may have resulted in us missing our window of opportunity to achieve the victory we desired, and now may have to settle for something much less. We'll see where we're at in a couple a few months, there remains the possibility that Iraq will embrace democracy and develop a functional economy against tremendous odds.