That year was more wasted than I thought.

[Fat Charlie]

And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place. What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable? I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq.

-Dick Cheney, April 1991

In years past, Iranian officials would smirk when recalling how the United States had done the dirty work for them by removing the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni who led an eight-year war against Shiite Iran.

To top it off, the American military actively helped an Iran-friendly government of Shiites to consolidate power and then voluntarily pulled out. With precious little investment, Iran had gained a critical ally.

-New York Times, June 2014

Mission Accomplished, I guess. Sigh. I knew I was wasting a year of my life when I went, and mainly that's all that it cost me. Pretty lucky compared to the poor *******s who got dumped onto the already overworked VA. I ended up leaving the Army after 14 years because I wasn't willing to keep going back there to accomplish... nothing. Now it turns out it was less than nothing. Woo hoo!

[kir_kenix]

Yeah I hear ya. I spent a big chunk of my teens and early 20's in Iraq (and Afghanistan, and Nicaragua, and Egypt, and Sudan, and, and, and). I thought we had turned a corner at some point, but I knew we were going to need to stay there a loooong time to really fix any of their problems (long like Korea). I'm still in the Guard (Air Guard this time, we get hotel rooms and box lunches!...1000x better than the Army).

Agree or disagree with how and why we went in, I think just about everybody agrees that the Iraqi government wasn't ready for prime time. Now we will be doing surgical air strikes and drone attacks for...who knows, maybe ever. It would have taken Iraq another 5-10 years bare minimum to figure all this out and have the infrastructure to fight these insurgents. Guess the only up side is all the crazies are busy in North Africa and the Mid East...for now.

[gone-ot]

If it was still *glowing* today, there would *BE* NO insurgents around to occuply anything!