Bush is loved by millions of Kurds.
They think the guy is great.
In their eyes he made a lot of mistakes but he saved their butts from Saddam and Turkey.
Now they get to be a real nation with seemingly limitless petro-dollars.
They are pretty safe from Turkey since those guys screwed us at the last minute during the invasion.
I still wonder what the battle for Iraq would have been like if the Tanks had been allowed to sweep through as planned, taking the north city by city. It was unconquered and the insurgency set up camp.
Water under the bridge now.

The Kurds loved Clinton as well. Remember that it was his doing that kept them secure from the republican guard....until their own leaders invited the Iraqi army back into northern Iraq.

The insurgency started when Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army and put 400,000 armed and unemployed men on the streets.

Actually the insurgency was planned long ahead of time, 5th generation warfare is not a new concept. Any nation facing the US military will do the same, which is why moving forward "winning the peace" takes the stage front and center. PM Barnett has the right idea <link>

If you look at a timeline of the insurgency you'd see that the real violence didn't start until Bremer provided the manpower by disbanding the Iraqi army. 400,000 soldiers with AK-47s and RPGs are out of work. The planning that the Saddam regime had done was nothing without our help.

Bush is hated by far more people than the folks who would say that they like the guy. Better than 70% of the voters in the US disapprove of his administration.

"I still wonder what the battle for Iraq would have been like if the Tanks had been allowed to sweep through as planned, taking the north city by city. It was unconquered and the insurgency set up camp.
Water under the bridge now."

Did you ever have a clue as to what has been going on in Iraq? Most of the North is still "unconquered". The vast majority of the Kurds in the North have always been our allies, because they have never really wanted to be lumped into Iraq. They would also like to regain their territory in Southern Turkey. The US has recently acquiesced to allowing Turkey's military to enter Northern Iraq to attack Kurdish forces that they felt threatened their border security.

But you can just make up your own story... That's what the Bush administration did. It's easy to see how well that has worked out for them.

...from the North nothing in Iraq would be any different than it is today. Saddam pulled off the biggest sucker-punch in modern history. He may be dead but Americans are still dying stuck in a quarmire called - civil war.

bush is simply the most incompetent president we have ever had - thank goodness his mission is accomplished in January.

The battle for the region has been going on for decades, will go on for decades and neither Clinton, McCain or Obama are going to change that trend. The key to reducing future conflict is stability. PM Barnett shows us the future of warfare here <link>

Turkey screwed us plain and simple, (they did it democratically by the way) but that doesn't mean we had to like it. You can minimize it all you want, but the fact is no one knows for sure the impact, but I can safely say it wasn't good for the US war effort, here is some context <link> Also please note it was Iraq who allowed Turkey to send troops after Turkish rebels, to virtually no effect. The Presoident of Iraq, who is a Kurd, made sure the Northern section got a great deal. It is a defacto state as it is today. Great oil and lots of air cover from the US with plenty of Direct Foreign Investment. Turkey has reason to be concerned. And the fight will continue with new players.

The Taliban just murdered 28 people for not opposing the government. NYT says that Pakistan's CIA has been trying to assassinate Karzai (Pres of Afgh).

In the Mideast, killing and sects have dominated humanity for at least 5,000 years without a stop. Read the Old Testament.

USA was set up to get away from all that horror, which extended into Europe.

Then USA was overtaken by "Globalists" with opposed motives from leftist Globalists and rightist Globalists -- but ALL still Globalists. Barack Obama even screams his belief in Globalism every day.

Somehow USA has been suckered into losing its understanding of the dangers of foreign entanglements -- so much that USA is begging and whimpering over the need to obtain energy.

Snap out of it!! The Mideasterners will be killing and killing for at least another hundred years. Maybe the Chinese are right to look on all non-Chinese as barbarians.

Can we get back to the USA of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Paine?

Hyperbole is idiotic. You lose credibility and your forum when you employ it willy-nilly.

"Globalism" is a broad concept. The fact that you use it referring to both Imperialistic Domination and Economic Cooperation suggests that your real problem is simply fear of others. Xenophobia is foolish and self-defeating. We aren't a distant island like we were 300 years ago. Sucks for you.

I'm not xenophobic. That's a "grr-word" that nobody wants to be called -- and far more hyperbolic than my screed here.

But when you label someone "xenophobic," in today's world, you automatically sound right simply by using the vocabulary of mainstream erudition or "political correctness."

I simply call your attention to the stark contrast between the Founders' desires to stay away from foreign entanglements, vs today's Globalism from both left and right.

I blame a lot of USA's troubles on Globalism. Preppies want cheap labor and leftists want to bring up the masses in other countries. The leftists have learned that they can "do good" that way.

I see the net result as tripled world population since 1950.

And I HAVE heard BO SCREAM "globalism" in the context of his speechifying about "challenges" where he makes globalism sound like unalloyed progress. Unfortunately, BO almost never gets into the arithmetic of globalism, where VAT taxes throughout the world bar USA products and wages of 25-cents an hour (in Asia) are killing our people (in USA) and rotting our currency to the delight of subversive internationalists and dictators.

...key to reducing future conflict is stability. What I was disputing was your statement about how much better off we would be if Turkey allowed us to also invade from the North.

My base premise is Saddam intentionally allowed easy entry in knowing that we would become bogged down in a long-term conflict - which, we are. Attacking from any direction is meaningless...

The world population has tripled because of globalism? I thought it was people having no idea of what contraception was. Go figure.

Globalists benefit (they think) from cheap labor, which is cheapened by a large supply of humanity.

Globalists see some kind of benefit from raising living standards and food supplies worldwide. The result (but not among prosperous countries) is rising population.

One idea is that by increasing the number of consumers abroad and their wealth, more demand for American products is fostered.

There are also religious Globalists, who feel that their beneficence is demonstrated by creating a growing population. They cite "be fruitful and multiply."

Then there is more to religious Globalism, where they view sex as evil unless it is for procreation, which they call "good." Globalism comes in here even more intensely when Globalists peddle their Christian religion and values to foreign countries and invest money in fighting ideas like evolution and sex-for-pleasure.

Globalism has many facets shining rays other than mere free-trade.

The economic idea centers on benefits to the world and not just the nation. World-benefit concepts usually call in religious forces.

Nowadays, USA has fanatical economic Globalists (e.g. Furman as BO's eco chief) who are comitted to proving the correctness of their ideology. I suggest putting them off the ship.

The Founders lived in a different time. They weren't perfect. They weren't prophets. They agreed to allow slavery and to officially count black men as 3/5th's of a person.

Their fear of "foreign entanglements" was justified in their era. The US was a minor player 232 years ago, and could have been crushed militarily or economically by some foreign escapades.

But times change. A global economy has led to significant economic prosperity in this country. It was our entanglement in WWII, and to a lesser extent WWI, that rocketed our economy and power to the top.

I'm sorry if xenophobic is a phrase you don't like. Unfortunately, I simply can't think of any other phrase that properly summarizes your position in this thread.

Again, when you use hyperbole regarding Senator Obama "screaming," you lose credibility. The man doesn't scream. Sorry if that annoys you. Learn to live with disappointment.