Not meant to be a reply to anyone in specific, just some thoughts based on my experience working with the military and intelligence communities as a government civilian and contractor over the past few years.

1. In retrospect, there was no good reason to invade Iraq. We didn't really know enough (or at least as much as we thought we did) to go invading another sovreign nation, and even what I would call the "humanitarian side-effect" that folks talk about now isn't enough. As my Dad likes to say, "it's bad everywhere", and as others have pointed out, it's not like Iraq was the worst place by any means. The truth is that no government will ever involve itself in a conflict of any size based purely on the right and wrong of the situation - there are always other factors, the primary of which are the significance of the situation to average Americans and the expected cost (dollars and lives) that an action will likely incur. This is reality, and like it or not it's the responsible way to run anything from a country to a small business. Even charity organizations know they can't fix everything. President Kennedy probably said it best when we he said this:

"And we must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, that we are only six percent of the world's population, that we cannot impose our will upon the other ninety-four percent of mankind, that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity, and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem."

2. This does not mean that good things aren't going on in Iraq anyway. Folks that have been on the ground over there (especially those that have done multiple tours) will tell you that there is a lot of pro-American sentiment amongst a majority of the population, and real progress has been made on infrastructure upgrades, stabilization of government, etc. Again, this is not an acceptable reason for justifying the invasion after the fact, but it's simultaneously undeniable that good things are now happening.

3. Nowhere near an exact figure of fatalities will ever be known, but the number of Americans who've died is only a tiny percentage of the overall casualties. I think we should be ashamed that we scream about 4-5K coalition casualties when the Iraqi people have suffered exponentially more. I believe the general American public has lost its stomach for war and our enemies know this, and as such their specific strategy is to scare us into leaving. I believe we owe it to those Iraqi citizens that have died, most of whom we killed with our own bombs, to help them stabilize their country before we leave. I think that means we need to be prepared to spend whatever dollar figure, and however many more American lives it takes. We made this mistake and it's our responsibility to fix it. Anything less only further weakens our credibility as a force of good on the world stage.

4. The Iraq conflict is really a tale of two struggles, and when you divide the US death count as such, you realize two truths which you may or may not see as positive. The first death count is from the actual war (up to the infamous "Mission Accomplished" point) and is a small percentage of the overall number. This is a credit to the training and professionalism of our armed forces, which managed to defeat a SYMMETRIC threat with a ridiculously small number of casualties. The second count really is from what would be better termed as an "occupation effort" and is much higher. I believe this is a credit to us as a nation; we know we really stepped into it when we went over there, but in the face of a mounting body count we have been determined to fix things before we leave. (I know plenty of Army guys that keep volunteering to go back because they feel such a conviction to make things better.) Again, that doesn't pardon our obvious lack of a front-end strategy or diminish the fact that going over there to begin with was a bad idea. But I believe is says something about us as a people that we should be proud of.

5. Unfortunately we may never know the exact reason why it happened, largely because EVERYONE, from the former administration, to Congressional leaders, to the director of the CIA, to individual civilian, military, and contractor analysts, probably all played some part. Bush may or may not have had a personal vendetta, he may or may not have been the puppet of Cheney and others, members of Congress may or may not have felt compelled to agree with the invasion to avoid appearing "soft" on terrorism, the director of the CIA may or may not have been pressured to have his guys/gals find something in Iraq to attack, and some junior analyst somewhere may or may not have just been trying to be a hero to his bosses to get promoted early and made the whole thing up. (Btw, there's a movie called "The Tailor of Panama" that explores this idea but from a totally different perspective.) The truth is that there's blood on the hands of individuals at all levels and in both parties, and pointing fingers after the fact is pointless and occasionally borders on childish. So get over it. Studying history to learn its lessons is critical, but I don't think calling each other and our leaders hippies, war mongerers, or just plain idiots qualifies as careful examination. People from all walks of life, belief systems, and IQ levels made this thing happen. Now how do we avoid it next time?

6. Contractors, including Halliburton, don't try to start wars just to make money. Lots of contractors have been killed in this conflict, and no company wants that to happen, regardless of how much profit there is to be made. That said, waste and abuse is beyond rampant in the DoD and intelligence community amongst both "govies" and contractors, and it was that way long before Iraq and even 9/11. Unfortunately swelling budgets coupled with decreasing oversight have made the problem dramatically worse. From other threads I expect some of you guys already know this, but for the uninitiated (say from ivory towers in California - give me a break btw) the DoD and IC has two funding black holes. One is called "end of year" funds, which is basically a system where money is miser-ed for the first 10 months of the fiscal year, and then blown on anything and everything in the last two months to prevent an organization's budget from shrinking. This situation has existed for awhile, and is an inevitable product of government budgeting policy. The other and far more dangerous and wasteful pot is called "GWOT (Global War on Terror)" funds, which from what I've seen is an endless stream of money that is considered supplemental to the existing budget. In principle it's a good idea; when fighting an asymmetric enemy an organization may be unable to adequately plan for every eventuality, so it's good to have a general pot of money in reserve that they can tap into for help. In practice there's very little careful examination of what's being spent and why. In my personal experience I've seen it wasted on anything from six 72" plasma displays for a 20' X 30' office to funding efforts that directly compete with other budgeted efforts. I even saw a request for $20 million to move a satellite dish from once side of a base to the other. Thank God our Director used to work in that area and knew it would only cost about $600K. The bottom line is shame on the government for simply encouraging capitalism to take its inevitable course. Budget policy, not oft-cited contractor greed, is the problem that needs to be addressed.

Moral of the story: there's a lot of complexity to this situation and politics in general, so don't buy into the oversimplified and trite soundbites and insults you hear on CNN, FoxNews, SNL, or on your favorite radio talk show. It's just not that simple.

Anywho, just some thoughts...