People who imagine a victory in Iraq are just plain stupid, I'm sorry.

[Philosoraptor]

They are delusional if they think there will be some outcome we can call victory in Iraq. How do they see this hallucination? The Green Zone opened up with a new Disneyland attached? Victory parades in the streets of Baghdad? Christ returns in Iraq to open the new McDonald's, Wendy's, and Long John Silver's?

But then people who think god put w in the white house will believe any bullshit you throw at them. Stupid is the only thing I can think of to call them.

I wish some Democrat would just get in bush's face and tell him to stop using the ridiculous word victory in regard to Iraq. It's a childish fantasy, and it's an insult to everyone involved. It will end in total disaster and chaos, not shiny victory.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. In order to have victory, you have to have an enemy....

apparrently Iraq itself has become the enemy, this really wasn't the original stated goal of idiot son, the original stated goal was to rid Iraq of wmdz. We already did that even though we didn't have to. I'm trying to make as much sense as the chimperor here.... please forgive.

[madokie]

2. sorry you're much to logical for that

theres no making no sense of jr's

[kenny blankenship]

3. At this point they may be redefining victory as

a dictatorship in Baghdad brutal enough to reimpose Saddam Hussein's version of domestic tranquility and which they hope would prevent Iraq from becoming a home to terrorist groups like Afghanistan was. Or they may now define victory as whatever it takes to keep the sectarian violence in Iraq from spreading to neighboring countries. It's worth exploring what they might be willing to call victory at this point. Naturally, if their definitions of winning are like these they won't want to talk about it openly with the American people. They will just say "victory" is still their goal, and "not surrendering to terrorists" is their bottom line, and keep their strategic goals sketchy. Just to talk about their (probable) real goals would be to acknowledge how much they've lost already or risk losing through the Iraqi misadventure. Their goal used to be a shiny happy democracy in Iraq that would set off a wave of neo-liberal revolutions (and petro-privatization) around the middle east, but now their goal has degenerated to frantically trying to preserve the bad, old middle east, with its corrupt royal families and mustachioed dictators and state owned oil monopolies, from collapsing before a wave of fundamentalist Islamic revolutions.

Nowadays they're probably thinking more along lines of how can we contain this chaos and defeat to Iraq and keep Saudi Arabia and other oil rich allies safe? Or maybe even how can we deny Iran any benefit from their win in Iraq for as long as possible, while we think what the hell we're going to do in the surrounding region? Since it's obvious that they can't achieve the captive bourgeois republic of New Iraq that they dreamed of in 1999 with free and easy oil contracts for their friends, then they're probably defining success at such diminished and fear-driven goals as their new victory. First they sought victory in pursuing a greed-driven agenda, now they seek victory in their fear-driven agenda--the need is more urgent the second time around.

[TangoCharlie]

6. Rolling back is one possible outcome ...

Would it make sense to "undo" this mess? A rollback plan to undo GHWB, WJC, and GWB:

Help the sunnis dominate the shia and kurds.

Help the baath party dominate the sunnis

Get Saddam out of jail to run the baath party.

Return Kuwait to Saddam.

Pull all the U.S. military.

Sit down with Saddam and say "I hear you have some oil to sell ..."

[daveskilt]

7. didnt the US already do that the first time?

[kenny blankenship]

8. I don't think they can do that

the Shia are not going to be denied--we're long past the point where they can be relegated to the basement of Iraq again. Immediately after the capture of Baghdad it might have been possible to hand off the govt to one of Saddam's generals (one of those who declined to face us in the drive to Baghdad, or the highest ranking survivor, or the one with the best mustache, or..) We might have a relative success now in Iraq had we taken the course of least dislocation/ maximum continuity and simply recognized a New Saddam from the Ba'ath Party. I would still have been completely against the invasion as I was before, yet I concede that there may have been a path from very start that if we avoided certain wrong turns, may have brought us to a functioning Iraq in 2006--an Iraq with grave problems but still functioning as a country. If we had taken a different path from the early hours my opposition to the war might be just a bitter memory that bugs me as I watch my hated enemy George Bush actually succeed in regime change and nation building. But he tried to transform everything about Iraq instead of trying to set it back on its feet. We cannot undo the damage he's done, nor can anyone but Iraqis reverse the break up of the Iraqi national character into sectarian and ethnic blocks.

What you need to carry out your plan is a time machine.

[gratuitous]

4. Don't be sorry

I was watching the news last night, and they had a "Dueling Banjos" segment with the family survivors of soldiers killed in Iraq. With their usual "even-handedness" and "balance," the story (I think it was on ABC) had parents on both sides of the issue: One set of parents saying that there's nothing good happening or coming out of Iraq, including their son's lifeless body; the other set saying that people who call for a pull-out simply don't understand the nature of the conflict, and that we must achieve victory in Iraq. Both sets of parents seemed to agree, though, that their sons' deaths would be pretty meaningless if the United States left Iraq, and the country descended into even more unimaginable chaos. One set of survivors saw it as an inevitability, the other set figured it hadn't quite happened yet.

There are lots and lots of reasons for people to imagine that something called "victory" can be achieved in Iraq. Some are cold, calculating profiteers, looking to wring every last dime they can out of the Treasury. Some are grieving parents and family, unable to come to grips fully with the death or maiming of their loved one. Others are indeed just plain stupid, folks who see this atrocity as nothing more than another move in a grand political game, and winners and losers will be determined by who can spin this shit while getting splattered the least.

[radwriter0555]

5. What would they be victors of?? What is the goal in Iraq that 3000 Americans have

died for?

I have never gotten an answer on that one...