ADN

=D>

The problem is we arrest the #2 guy and the #3 guy just takes his place... everyone gets promoted. It's an endless chain of events.

But it's a good start Ruff

Removing Saddam was a good start, but the follow through is what is lacking. If the government keeps playing this political game over there and not try to piss anyone off, we will continue to lose lives and look foolish until the next president comes in and pulls us out of there.

Mark my words... the next election will be won by the guy who says he is willing to pull us out of Iraq the quickest. The American people are sick of this war as it doesn't seem to have an end in sight. Bush declared victory WAY too early.

Agreed. I honestly believe that if Bush hadn't declared "victory" in Iraq, his approval numbers would be a lot higher than they currently are. He set the expectation that since the war was "over", our men and women would soon be coming home. Instead the attrition rate has risen since the insurgents know it's just a waiting game now.

I don't know what we need to do there, but I do know this is rapidly becoming another Viet Nam in the eyes of the American public.

Bush put us in a very awkward position now. If we pull out, the country torpedoes into a civil war. If we stay, we become am occupying force instead of a peacekeeping force. NATO is a joke, the Iraqi police are a joke, and everyone else in the world wants to put distance between themselves and Iraq to prevent terror attacks on their soil.

What we really need to do is go on the offensive. Search and destroy for all insurgents. We need to get back to trying to find Osama Bin Forgotten to put a major dent in the al-Qaeda network. There will always be some nutcase that wants to blow him/herself up for their religion, but capturing or killing Osama would be a major hurdle in the war.

Agreed 100%. After 9/11 all the talk was "Get Bin Laden" then all of a sudden everything shifted to Iraq. I wonder why? Was it just easier to go after Saddam than hunt thru the mountains and caves of Afganistan like the Russians tried to do? I think short of a nuke or FAE, it's gonna be very difficult to weed out al Quaeda. We have few or no humint assets in the area, we're trying to find him using all these technological means and they're going low tech to avoid being detected.

We could never use a nuke or Fuel-Air Explosive unless we are at a full scale world war again. The backlash from that would be immense.

As for Bin Laden, there is nothing we have today that can look inside a mountain and tell what is in it. What we need is more ground searching and less Iraq-Al Qeada wanna be links.

I don't think the next election will be won by whoever says they'll get us out of there the quickest. It'll be won by whoever has the best way to get us out of there. Like you said Ruff, if we leave too quickly, it'll turn into even more chaos and war. It's a very delicate situation. $10 says that Bush will call martial law and stay in office