It’s true, we’re not at the stage where I’d wanna scream something akin to “Hey, Hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?” in front of the Whitehouse, but this war is a quagmire, a money-pit, a canker-sore on our international lip, and….. MOST DISGUSTING…. it is like Vietnam in ‘65…. being portrayed as “something we need to do” or “the tough, but right choice.”

It needs to be labelled what it is: One of the biggest and gravest mistakes our country has ever made.

Having said that, yes….. I know we’ll be in Iraq for several more years and I can accept that as the sad, but realistic truth. Can I accept it quietly? Possibly, but I’m trying to suppress the urge to hit the sidewalk outside with “Mr. Bush, I want to know. How many die before we go?”

With a Republican controlled congress any ideas of putting Bush, et. al. on trial is mere fantasy. In spite of all the rhetoric about war crimes and all, even if there were a trial I think the evidence required for any type of conviction is non-existant.

Still, regardless of what any of us want, we aren’t leaving Iraq anytime soon. With that being the case, and with a Supreme Court Justice about to be nominated, I think there are a number of other issues we need to be concentrating on. Issues all of us commenting here so far can agree on.

This war was a series of violations of the US supported Nuremberg dicta, the UN charter, the 1996 War Crimes Act and even the very law passed just as the legal cover for this war.

We can put an end to these foreign misadventures by instituting trials of Bush, Cheney, Perle, Rumsfeld, et al for crimes against humanity and crimes against the United States.

To make Iraq the last of our aggresive wars is to salvage the only good that can possibly come from it.

Eventually, the various factions of Iraqis WILL see us as a common enemy and galvanize against the U.S. and the “insurgency” will be worse. Once we HAVE left, there will STILL be a massive civil war in Iraq.

The question becomes: What is best for U.S.?

Do we indulge in another Vietnam style “grind” against an enemy which shakes our hand during the day and slits our throat at night? Was that productive for America?

Do we cut our troop losses, pick a dictator for Iraq and covertly support/arm him, and try to live with the results? Is that productive for America?

Righteousness? Give me a break. Does that ACTUALLY matter? HAS that mattered since…. I dunno…. since Hitler bought it in a bunker in Berlin?

What we’re looking for is a decent compromise of abject treachery and common goodness. We’re looking for something which will leave the least people dead, the most people happy, and be stable for a few years.

Righteousness…. lies moldering in the grave.

Our administration continues to lie about the strength of the Iraqi police/military. Claims of 200,000 trained and committed men are ridiculous. US officers in the field repeatedly state that they are inadequate, and that their loyalties are more than questionable.

Iraq didn’t exist as a nation until around 1920. It was cobbled together and only tenously held as one by force. It has chasm like religious and historical divisions between the Kurds, the Shi’ites, the Sunnis and others.

It is folly for us to believe that we can occupy Iraq until it is self supporting. The only way Iraq will unify, is by fighting against us.