Reply #7: Bad very bad. There are no good options here.

[bklyncowgirl]

We either stay there hemorraging troops and feeding the hatred against us or pull out and face another Vietnam except that this will be far worse than what happened in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese were interested in governing the entire country--and probably most people in the South were eager to see their corrupt overlords go. The Sunni and the Shia hate each other and have hated each other for centuries. Saddam Hussein held the country together with an iron fist. It's like Yugoslavia. The difference is that Clinton was able to forge an international alliance and once the fighting was over get peacekeepers in place to get these people to live together and rebuild their lives.

Bush insisted on his vanity war, lied to get us into it, and then made a total mess of it at every stage.

Our credibility is shot to hell. Perhaps had Kerry been elected some form of international peacekeeping force could have been put in place to hold the country together until they could get on their feet but with Bush and the neocons in power we will get no help from anyone anywhere.

Our troops are now part of the problem instead of part of the solution. The US must renounce all plans for permanent bases, make it absolutely clear that our intention is to remove all of our troops as soon as possible, work for the establishment of a strong government in Iraq, speed up the training of Iraqi forces and begin a phased pullout if anything is to salvaged at all.

This is a disaster that did not have to happen and Joseph Wilson is a hero for what he has done and what he has said.