"webster72n" wrote in message
...
The Vietnam War was largely considered lost, but I suppose you could
consider it a win for both sides, since we got our troops out and they
are
now at peace. We didn't accomplish what we went there to do, but we
shouldn't have tried to do that to begin with.

Leaving the rest up for discussion, I must whole heartedly agree with this
viewpoint and include Iraq in this equation. Initially we didn't go there
to
fight terrorism, nor to preserve *our* freedom, but for control of the
oil
reserves. Time *to wake up*. H.

Bush says we initially went there to fight terrorism, that the main if not
only reason we removed Saddam from power was because he was allowing
terrorists to train in his country and was even funding their efforts.
While this may have been our main reason for initially sending in troops,
Bush did seem to make a fool of himself by repeating that we were there
because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (which were apparently
smuggled out of the country just before we got there). I am a little
puzzled by every Bush speech that makes it sound like our entire mission in
Iraq is still fighting terrorists, even though we reportedly did kill
al-Quaeda's #2 guy among others. It seems most of our missions there have
nothing to do with any terrorists that are remotely connected with the
destruction of the World Trade Center. Our main mission it appears is
keeping the peace, which has a lot to do with religion (Sunnis fighting
Shi'ites), and surely has something to do with the flow of oil.
So I am in favor of keeping our troops there for as long as the Iraqi people
need us and as long as they are committed to taking over the peacekeeping
efforts themselves as soon as possible, and even sending more troops
temporarily, but it would be nice if a Bush speech would tell the whole
story.