How do you feel about the US occupation of Iraq?

I don't want us to have this burden around our necks. My America doesn't deserve this crap. But we bombed the joint, we killed off or arrested their leadership--hell, we even helped make that leadership in part the bastards that they became. This is our mess and we need to clean it up and make a true atonement for all our country has done over there.

I hate saying this. I hate believing it. But to just cut and run, or even to dump everything wholesale onto the UN at this point would be to totally abrogate our moral responsibility. This may have been Bush's call, but in a democracy the final authority and responsibility is with the people. We can vote in a new leader, but the job is still gonna be ours to do.

I favor bringing the UN into it. But the lion's share of the work should be ours.

I agree that we can't just up and pull out. Not now, anyway, or total chaos and civil war would likely ensue. Bush painted us into a corner. We did not have to invade Iraq. There should have been careful, thorough, uncensored debate. There should have been an exit strategy carefully planned, in any case. But we had the Bushists in power so we got none of that. We got a poorly justified invasion followed by a poorly plotted occupation. We allowed ourselves to get pulled down into the Bushian gutter on this.

I do not approve of the occupation at all. This election year is an apt time to express those regrets and make clear how we're going to get out of there without making matters even worse than they already are.

you might well ask Hitler to "fix" Poland. Everything these people touch turns to, well you know...

Bad idea regardless, but we're going to have to clean it up..

I don't think any "positive change" is likely to come of the occupation, but I think someone needs to stay there at least a while longer to keep order and give the Iraqis a chance to pull themselves together. And that someone should be the UN, not us - we don't have anything resembling clean hands on this. Also, the infrastructure needs to be finished, and that should be paid for by us but not done by U.S. corporations.

I know, never gonna happen. But that's what should happen.