"Do we really want to occupy Iraq for the next 30 years?" bush & his Cabal are stupid...

[LynnTheDem]

but not everybody else was...

"Do we really want to occupy Iraq for the next 30 years? …In Japan, American occupation forces quickly became 50,000 friends. In Iraq, they would quickly become 50,000 terrorist targets…. Nations such as China can only view the prospect of an American military consumed for the next generation by the turmoil of the Middle East as a glorious windfall."
-James Webb, former Sec. of Navy under Ronald Reagan, Decorated Marine Veteran
http://www.sftt.org/article09302002a.html

"We are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever started."
-Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former Head of Central Command for U.S.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/10/17/zinni

"A billion bitter enemies will rise out of this war."
- Wall Street Journal, January 13, 2003, Full page ad in Wall Street Journal by major GOP contributors
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/001444.html

"Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends…. I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defense and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster.

The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaeda. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic."
-Gen. William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091704Y.shtml

"The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options."
-General Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091704Y.shtml

[MadMaddie]

1. How Prophetic...

"our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic."

Gen. William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency

[jwirr]

2. NO, but I think that there are some events which will force us to face

the music and get out of there: global warming, oil peak, water shortages, economic crisis. As these things get worse and people begin to realize that we cannot afford to be at war when everything around us is falling to pieces then war is going to seem like the waste it really is. We will see the need to put our resources into alternatives and helping to change the outcome of our future. Right now we are acting as if our future is hinged to oil and no other ideas are operative.

[EVDebs]

3. Nixon era plans pulled off the shelf by Cheney

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/02/MNG8G427D61.DTL

just sub 'Iraq' for 'Saudi Arabia' and voila !

Next, the Permanent Bases issue that got the Quakers spied upon by the NSA

http://www.fcnl.org/iraq/bases.htm (great little map feature, like the JudicialWatch site's map of Iraqi oilfields)

underscores the point that this was planned for and anticipated by our DoD.

What is even more idiotic is that we know that the bases are part of the fuel for the insurgency:

""A September 2006 poll of both Sunnis and Shias found that 71% of Iraqis wanted the U.S. to leave within a year, with 65% favoring an immediate pullout and 77% voicing suspicion that the U.S. wanted to keep permanent bases in Iraq.<32> 61% approved of attacks on U.S. forces.<33>""

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_insurgency#Analysis_and_polls

They've really screwed up to quote Gen Zinni.

""“There has been poor strategic thinking in this,” says Zinni. “There has been poor operational planning and execution on the ground. And to think that we are going to ‘stay the course,’ the course is headed over Niagara Falls. ""

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/21/60minutes/main618896.shtml

[shance]

4. Of course they do. The privileged wealthy white males want the entire Middle East to themselves.

It has nothing to do with you.

To them, you are irrelevant and they are just saying to you what they need to until the job is complete and they have all the control switches over your future and your livlihood. Then you will be their slave to use in whatever capacity they necessitate.

You will receive nothing from this perpetual war, but a depressed country/corporation that used to be called America.

Keep in mind you (and I) have been footing the entire bill for this wonderful adventure for oil and riches across the sea, otherwise known as the Iraqi occupation and genocide, and they will receive all the profits and take those profits elsewhere after they have left all the death and destruction behind.