...as to why we invaded Iraq:

"Because Afghanistan wasn't enough," Kissinger answered. In the conflict with radical Islam, he said, they want to humiliate us. "And we need to humiliate them."

This isn't realism and it's more than just delusionary: it's racism, pure and simple.

He's balling up all the people in the Middle East and saying that they are the same as the terrorists: "they" (the terrorists), he says, want to humilate us, thus we need to humilate "them" (people in Iraq who had no connection to the terrorists). Note the conflation?

We no more 'humilated' the terrorists by invading Iraq and deposing Saddam than the mafia would be humilated or stopped by the invasion of Italy and the deposition of the Pope. In fact, the terrorists who hit us on 9/11 had even less connection to Iraq than the mafia has to Italy.

Racism is what lies behind the insane theory of the "demonstation model." The basic idea is that all the brown people (unlike white people) are connected by invisible strings and tom-tom drums and that they are all cowards who will slink away at the slightest sign of strength: so that if you lynch one brown person here, all the brown people over there will take note and behave in the desired manner; that is, they won't mess with Texas or with white women.

And by the same logic, if you want to control the behavior of a few terrorsts that you can't catch, than it makes just as sense to simply invade a whole other country where they're not even located, as long as that country shares a similar race and religion as the terrorists. IOW, we've now killed upwards of 100,000 people in an attempt to control the behavior of ten or maybe a hundred. That is what the "demonstration model" is about.

...or whatever else you're passing out to the losers.

I believe that all speculations on 2008 are meaningless at this point. Everything depends on what happens in Iraq. There is also a risk of a recession or worse.

George Bush, you see, isn't done fucking things up.

16. Do you have particularly strong feelings about the war in Iraq? If yes: Please explain those feelings.

Because I think he really doesn't care about the war in Iraq. Once it became clear we weren't going to have an easy win, the man seemed to lose interest in the subject.

...seems to have some connection with reality.

However, the statement that we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here shows that he still has a way to go before he reaches a state of complete sanity.

The people we're killing in Iraq are not the people we have to worry about. They were never the ones we had to worry about. The people we DO have to worry about are the survivors who will be left over. They are the ones who will be tough, smart, and bitter, and they will be fully trained in all the arts of killing us and hating us. There is no telling what they may do to us in the years and decades to come.

Remember that we were attacked on 9/11 as a direct result of the war in Afghanistan--the one that the Soviets fought. And recall that at that time we were actually on the side of the people who eventually attacked us. The first war in Afghanistan turned out to be nothing less than a proving ground for our enemies and the current war in Iraq will probably turn out to be an even better proving ground.

We broke their country and we smashed their pre-existing government and social order. The Iraqi people were left in a state of near anarchy in which insurgents and militias could prosper and grow.

Iraqis rarely see American soldiers. We don't provide security for Iraqis. We don't protect Iraqis citizens who help us. We don't protect the Iraqi soldiers who are supposed to take over from us. We don't catch, stop, or prevent insurgents from setting off suicide bombs or kidnapping people or cutting off their heads.

We have given the Iraqis no chance to create a stable society. The reason is because we have put in too few troops to maintain order and because we are too busy protecting the safety of our troops at the expense of their mission.

To protect our troops and to keep our casualty rate low (for political reasons), we've allowed torture and acts of mass reprisals against Iraqis suspected of insurgent activity. We've killed innocent families at roadblocks and we've destroyed towns and we've raped women. And we've done this while being holed up as much as possible inside the safety of our 'green zone' and bases.

We've managed to save the lives of a few of our troops by essentially making it impossible for them to complete their mission--which is an absolute waste of their lives when they do die or become wounded. And the irony is that the casualty rate (the dead plus wounded) is in fact not much better than Vietnam.

We're not going to get out of this mess too easily. We are going to pay a price for this folly one way or another, whether we stay on or pull out. We may just pay it in shame and loss of prestige. We may pay it in terrorist attacks for years and decades to come. But we will pay.