Al_Batross, your comment concerning more troops initially bears some further reflection. I’ll counter with the observation that from the very first hours we had all the boots on the ground–not to mention firepower–in Baghdad to prevent the subsequent rioting post-occupation. As I recall it was Rumsfeld’s decision not to quell the disturbance with the kind of violence that you seem now to advocate. The question has to be asked, What kind of face would unleashing that kind of violence at that time have put on our presence? Imagine the media and Arab reaction. In retrospect I think the response to ‘not just do something but stand there’ was in the end more beneficial than not. But that’s still probably a judgment call and judgment is in the eye of the beholder.

Wadeseuf, your insight about standing up a reliable and ethical Iraqi Army goes to the central question about who in the end would rule. Would it be the Sunni thugs, the Shi-ite militias, us in perpetuity? Someone made the purposeful and hard decision to disband an irredemiably corrupt Ba-athist organ of control and replace it with something much better. Most people don’t appreciate what a monumental task this has been. An army is never defined by the common soldier, but by its officer corps. It takes years to prepare men to lead. Not to go too far afield, but I think it was William Manchester who noted one of Hitler’s more remarkable achievements was his preparation of just such an elite in the period between the wars. Once he had them, putting an army together was a relatively easy thing to do. But without that prior preparation (done, by the way, in contravention of the terms of the Versailles Treaty) the Wermacht would have been no match for the French, much less the combined power of the Allies.