I wonder if Iraq would have benefited from a popularly elected president, instead of a PM chosen by a coalition of parliamentary representatives. The party situation in Iraq is currently just too damned unstable for this to work, IMO.

Luis: Disbanding the Iraqi army was the Dems’s talking point to fault the Administration for Iraq’s lawlessness. The fact was: there was no army to disband. The army just melted away, and the Administration didn’t know what to do to reverse that. The Iraq top brass were all Baathists, they led the insurgencies. The rest of the army were Sunnis and conscripts. The Sunnis followed their commanders to fight the occupiers, the conscripts wanted to go home as soon as they could. The problem was we did not have enough Americans to clear and hold before the surge.

Rushing Iraq into a democracy: What else should and could we do? Prop up a strong man, a mini-Saddam? Set up an American “colonial” govt.? Neither would have the legitimacy to rule. The Iraqis should change their Constitution, so that their PM can be elected by the people instead of agreed upon in back room deals. The Italians change their govts. every couple of months depending on the coalition of the day, the Belgians still don’t have a govt. after the latest election, and we expect the Iraqis to have an up and running govt. strong enough to fight the terrorrists? Our politicians can’t agree on much of anything, ask Pelosi. And we expect the Iraqis to arrive at a consensus?

We were in such a rush to get out now look at us. Of course the rush was always to appease the critics.