Success or failure? Hmmmm, good question. I guess from your definition of success Spartacus "Giving the Iraqi people a chance to govern themselves toward a stable democratic society" sounds like a good measure of success. I personally would like to see success despite whoever is in charge. I think how most people have answered this question so far on this thread has been analyzed in the light of if it will be a possibility. I think this is debatable. Is our desire for success greater than the sacrifice necessary in order to attain it? Almost every single assumption of our prewar intelligence has been false. Bush didn't do enough to persuade people to see the benefit of a self governing Iraq rather than persuade us through fear of biological weapons. It may very well be far into the future when the Iraqis are self-governing. We really don't know. Are we as a country willing to sacrifice as much as possible to see democracy flourish in Iraq, and will it be important to create war in neighboring countries to see it work. Then again, Iraq is already too diverse to revert to Iranian stytle theocracy, the bathists won't control the government again, Iraq itself is too rich to fall into unending poverty. We should anticipate success given all that we've sacrificed. I for one would like to see the iraqis as a self-governing society, which sounds a helluva alot better than being coerced by a despot for vote for a single person on the ballot every election... Hope things work out.
- Preston