Bush's legacy: Losing a war that a competent president would win in 3 weeks.

All the "3 week" predictions assumed a competent president with competent people in place. Bush couldn't even win a war that everyone agreed should be over in 3 weeks. What a fuckin incompetent failure. Bush will go down in history as a joke.

but starting it in the first place.

There will also be plural wars started (and lost) under bogus pretenses after the bombing of Iran.

just listen to the video of Cheney from about 1994. Quaqmire was inevitable.

The war was not only wrong headed, it was also unwinnable if the conditions for victory included 'installation of a stabile Iraqi government friendly to american interests'. People with clarity in both the anti-war movement and within military and state department circles warned that toppling the saddam regime and defeating the Iraqi army would result in a prolonged disaster along the lines of exactly what has happened.

The incompetence of this regime includes their pig-headed resolve to ignore sound advice and proceed with the invasion and occupation of Iraq anyway, and includes a massively negligent management of the post conquest occupation, but there was no way that, short of a nuclear obliteration or similar atrocity, Iraq was going to be a peacefuly region after the fall of the Baath regime.

We aren't running against Bush in 2008. We must assign blame for the war to not just Bush, but to those who advised him from the Republican party, and pushed war.

:shrug:

that said, no amount of competency would have 'won' in iraq. the '3-week' thing was a pipe dream no matter led this clusterfuck. the iraqis are a proud people that just aren't going to stand for an occupation by western infidels under any circumstances.

You just need to adjust your definition of "winning". If you think the goal was a stable, peaceful democratic, Iraq then yeah, they lost big time.

But if the goal was to repress dissent. loot the treasury, reduce an arab country to chaos to use as a petrie dish for the worst neocon ideals, and destroy the US army to the point where it will never again intercede against global corporatism....mission accomplished.

a war that was un winnable in the first place. No President could have won it. No good President would have fought it. This jingoistic asshole
just wanted to look like a big man and line some Republican pockets. It's beginning to look like he'll get away with it. I keep hoping that his Karma
will somehow rise up and bite him on the ass, but it doesn't look like thats gonna happen.

The impression I get is that immediately after the invasion the Iraqi people were basically waiting to see how the occupation would turn out.

A lot of the officers I am reading are absolutely convinced that there is no saving Iraq now, but they also seem to think that had the occupation been properly handled it could have turned out considerably better than it has.

When the US forces protected the oil ministry and the oil fields and let the Iraqi citizenry go to hell was when the occupation was truly lost, IMO.

Actions speak louder than words and the actions of the US Military, under the command of the neocons, showed that the Iraqi people meant absolutely nothing to them.

There probably was a Friedman Unit right after the invasion when there was a chance to make a better life for the Iraqi people, but it was blown away on a hurricane of greed and hubris.