<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">Matt asks:</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">"how Bush/Obama or whomever can ensure success on a battlefield? Aren't all battles a gamble, thus the last option? I don't feel Iraq was a total failure but one we should have not involved ourselves with."</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">I think the answer to your second question helps answer your first. The Iraq war was not the last option. We were not being attacked. They were not behind 911. It turns out they probably didn't have wmds either.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">We did not need to invade Iraq, especially considering Afghanastan was being neglected. </p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">The whole war was based on false pretenses. Those who challenged that were ridiculed. But the facts were apparent even to those living over there having bombs dropped on their heads.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">Don't you think it is normal for them to resent a country that propped up Saddam, left them hanging during the 90's and then came back, taking control of the oil fields before Baghdad?</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">Don't you think they saw the war machine gearing up under sketchy circumstances?</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">Don't you think having a loved one killed by a US soldier is going to piss them off?</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">Don't you think they heard the religious rhetoric coming from the US military and government?</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">Why would they trust American power? </p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">Why would they all of a sudden get along with each other?</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">Shock and aweing another people is not the best way to get them to like you. From the beginning there were mulitiple reasons why an insurgency would develop which would thwart any success.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">As soon as you call your war "Infinite Justice" and name your weapons "hellfire" missles, you are going to shake the religious hornets nest.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">You can't beat that. Fanaticism turns people into suicide bombers. They will always be a threat.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">I think you have to walk in the shoes of the people you are fighting. Until you understand their motives for hating you, you won't have any option but to keep fighting. And you can't kill them all without causing too much damage (death and destruction) that in itself feeds the flame of resentment.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">I don't think we can make people over there get along. If they don't have a common enemy to hate (the US) they are probably going to keep killing each other based on their historical grievences, competition or just to survive.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">Saddam kept a lid on the violence that erupted.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">The question is how long, how much blood and how much money are going to be on our hands until we realized realistically there isn't going to be success on that battlefield?</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">Call me pessimistic, but I don't have much hope for humanity over there. Human emotions are raw from lack of love and nourishment. Their bodies and souls are sick. Feeding that with violence will only continue to make those people more unhealthy, and thus more likely to resort to their animal natures. I have no idea how to solve that.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">Fortunately our own v2020 rivalries aren't at quite the temperature as a sunni vs shiite.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">But to answer your question, you can't have success on the battlefield if the war your fighting is based on lies and the wrong reason, which the Iraq war is.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">Thanks for requesting my opinion, however long winded and wrong it may be...</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Arial">gclev</p></td></tr></table>