Reserving for when I have time. Expect a sound and thought out counter

ok before i respond to that yell i would like to know your answer to one important question you didn't answer

what would be a win in iraq? how would you define it?

the facts are:
first;
911, the CIA and our own government let it happen.
why;
haliburton wanted a natural gas pipeline from kurkistan to the persian gulf.
why did we leave;
because with the terrorist blowing up the progress of the pipeline, it would never be finished.

iraqi;
why; personal.
first;
it was understood that the terrorist would follow our troops anywhere they went on Muslim ground.
second;
Saddam Hussein tried to kill GW's daddy, and left an insult to his name by not being eliminated by his own people, which was the reason GB senior wanted to leave, so that it would some how miracuously take care of itself.
so the reason that GW said step down (let inspectors investigate), and we will not attack.
it really didn't matter weather the investigators were allowed or not, GW just wanted him to step down.
so our troops are reasserted to the persian gulf to attack again, them knowing full well this  was going to happen.
meaning that the terrorist and any extremist would come there to fight making it apparent to the American public that it was a just war.
we should have stayed in afghanistan, and fought it out.... main reason, less innocent casualties, second a better terrain to fight on, instead of house to house, where innocents and troops get killed at a faster rate.

We send our combat forces out, we have a few bases there, and the place doesn't totally explode like Haiti.

we bomb the hell out of AQ in Iraq and all the separatist dorks, we train the Iraqi army to take over combat duty, and the Iraqi government holds elections successfully, and negotiates a withdrawal agreement with us that holds up after our combat troops leave.
There is no mountain we climb, we've been moving there for four years, Iraqis are doing more and more and since 2006 it is working better and better.

Gladiator, you started off your post with an already pre-conceived notion: The 'jihadists' are the Iraqi people defending their lands.

Let me correct you in that:

1) It is known that the Iraqi people (as a nation) are not fighting American forces.
2) What you term as "jihadists" is not the same as "terrorists".  American forces are now encountering terrorists/extremists.
3) Letting them have their 'civil war' is quite hypocritical of you, especially since you haven't supported the Georgian incursion of South Ossetia, now have you?
4) When dictatorships fall abruptly, there is a power vacuum.  When such occurs, people fight to fill it.  We went into Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.  We DID NOT go into Iraq to start a civil war, leave it's infrastructure completely destroyed, and allow an extremist hotbed.

Now, to answer your question, victory is not the complete annihilation of our enemy.  Victory is when America deems it to be.  There is no victory in leaving a weak Iraq.  There is no victory in staying in Iraq.  In fact, America already acheived Victory in Iraq during the invasion.  We toppled Saddam.  That was our victory.  Just like we helped toppled the Third Reich and the Dictatorship of Mussolini, just like we forced the submission of Japan, and freed South Korea of Communist rule.  That was our victory.  And I dare you to look at those past examples and tell me that just because American troops are still in those countries, we have yet to acheive victory.

> DPS wrote:

> Unless you can show that the Coalition had every intention of filling the vacuum created by the fall of Saddam and they simply failed then it would seem the current civil war, I feel it can be called such as it involves various local groups all contending for dominance, was intentional, which makes sense it takes your enemy's attention off you specifically.

Do you really think they expected an uncontrollable civil war considering that Coalition troops were in Iraq to begin with?  Either they didn't expect the civil war, they expected it yet believed they could contain it and simply failed, or they knew it would be uncontrollable, yet think US special forces are nothing more than zerglings.  My pick is the second one.

@DPS

There is a reason why America stayed after the toppling of Saddam and that was to help fill that power vacuum without throwing the nation into chaos.  Unfortunately, you can't control those who were oppressed and see a way to become the oppressor.  The Kurds, the Sunnis, Al-Sadr's militia, they all wanted to fill that void and they only knew one way to do it.  Without American troops, one of those would've become the next Dictatorship of Iraq.

Editting this post: I messed up and pushed "submit" way too early.

When we bombed Hiroshima, it was said that nothing green would grow there for 75 years. Weed started growing almost immediately.
Bombs may be more powerful now, but weeds can still grow

When I visited the museum it was indeed horrible, but I'm not traumatized.

> Simon wrote:

> When we bombed Hiroshima, it was said that nothing green would grow there for 75 years. Weed started growing almost immediately.
Bombs may be more powerful now, but weeds can still grow
_____________________________________________________
If only it was easy to eliminate the weeds of society without killing and/or damaging the innocent plants of society.

"I will fight for your right to be wrong!" << S.G. Tallentyre
"I am a flexible centrist: not stuck on right-wing, not stuck on left-wing, and not stuck on centre...and I don't flip-flop either" <<< me
Fighting for peace is like stopping the raping of a virgin.