MacGregor (who's obviously lost the bubble) is aware of the fact that we've done this for a great many years, right?

We've paid our allies since the Philippines in the early years of the last century. We've paid people not to fight us for longer than that -- unless we wanted something they had, then we attacked 'em instead of paying.

The only difference between what we're doing now and what we did in WW II, Korea and Viet Nam is inflation.

And, as Cav Guy pointed out, some here are making the same mistake MacGregor made -- judging this by western standards. You have the luxury of doing that, the Iraqis do not. They will judge by their standards and what we're doing makes perfect sense to them.