“During wartime, a certain amount of dissent is allowed, but only that which is given for the purpose of helping America win the war. Under no circumstances do you question America’s right to win; in other words, America is always on the right side, and if you question that, it’s because you’re on the enemy’s side.”

I think this point rose to the top for me. It seems that the discussion going on in the news media and congress is all about “success.” The question of whether we leave now or in a year and a half or never (most likely by my guess) is all about success and damage-control. The thing is that the lame excuses Bush used to get into this war have been debunked for what they were - lies, dirty lies, and filthy lies. And we’re still there. We went for invalid reasons and then when those reasons fell away, we “had to stay” so that we could at least have “success.”

I worry that for the United States to have “success” in this war would actually be the worst thing to happen to Iraq and the US. Iraq will be left with a bad puppet government (like Saddam when we placed him in power until he started hating on us), a completely ruined infrastructure (worse than when we came in), and strangely, most of their oil revenues will be unavailable to Iraqis because we’re bullying them into letting Big Oil own and profit from almost all of it. We’ll be left with a lot of Iraqi’s that can’t help but remember that it was us that messed everything up so much. I wonder if there are any Iraqi’s that don’t have a loved one that has been “collateral damage.”