Depends on how you define victory. Prior to intervention, Islamic extremists were killing Jews and Americans. Now they're killing each other.

You do the math.

So, they've expanded their killing base and this is a good thing? Now that they're killing Iraq citizens as well as Jews and Americans this invasion was a success? This is your justification of the war?!? I am truly beyond words...

I am afraid that if he won't listen and do. . . then the Republicans need to get the majority of them together and take an impeachment motion to the floor. I want the Republicans to do this as the Democrats will not because the Democarts are trying to bring some honor back to the house and think it would be considered "tit for tat" if the Democrats brought the charges. If the Republicans bring charges, I hope that they bring charges against Chaney at the same time. Goodness only knows they have broken enough laws that if it was me I would be put way for three lifetimes.

Sarah Pope

Premium Salon member

Exxon-Mobil and the rest of those Texas oil idiots are running out of oil reserves. Their goal in Iraq was to seize the oilfields and have a lot of oil that costs a buck or so a barrel to pump out of the ground, and sell it at world market prices. They would then have enough money to invest in whatever the next big energy source is, probably nuclear plus oil sands and shale. Eisenhower was on to them in the '50's. Texas was (and still is) a state that is devoid of any social services or social safety net. The oil barons would still like to have the rest of the US adopt their political agenda. They just cannot accept the loss of Iraq, their last best hope for continued wealth and power. Idiot boy loves those guys. They still have enough wealth to have bought most of the Republican Party and a lot of Democrats, so change is not going to be easy. The next few months are going to be very interesting.

Bush will listen to reason about Iraq around the same time as Charles Dobson applauds gay marriage, James Inhofe acknowledges the fact of global warming, and Pat Robertson checks himself into an insane asylum. Your article fails to identify the true underlying cause of Bush's Iraq psychosis: his religion. The fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity that all four men share is poison to the mind. When you devote yourself to a religion that eschews all reason, compassion and self-doubt, you tend to lose the capacity for these things in all other aspects of your life as well. In other words, when you believe that Jesus walked on water and that Noah collected two of every species on a giant wooden ark, it's very easy to believe the situation in Iraq is just dandy.

For those of us who haven't lobotomized ourselves for Christ, there is a silver lining in the ongoing catastrophe of the past six years: political Christianity, ascendant in the 1980s and 90s, has thoroughly discredited itself for generations to come.

Nothing new about this report that we don't already know. Baker is a Republican. Now, that's a breakthrough! If this report had come out before the election, Republicans might still control Congress. Who said "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"? As every good comic knows, timing is everything. And again, Republicans are off the beat. When these guys go dancing they have two left feet. It looks like more bloodshed ahead. Bin Laden is warming up back stage.

Will Bush listen to reason? What makes Bush tick? What are the family dynamics behind James Baker's reappearance? Will Congress have any influence on Bush? Bush Bush Bush Bush Bush.

In a parliamentary system, i.e. the kind in use in some form in every other advanced nation, we wouldn't have to bother with any of those questions. Bush's party would have removed him as leader, or the legislature would have voted "no confidence" and forced an election in which he would have been defeated and sent back into the minority (or the backbenches, or retirement).

Instead, it was left to the public to register no confidence. But the public could overturn the party control of the legislature (and did) without touching Bush directly -- a formula for two years of even more incoherent policy-making.

I yield to no one in my admiration of James Madison, but he knew only the best practices of 1787, not the present. And he and his colleagues had no experience governing a superpower capable of causing disasters on a global scale. We are now paying the price.

Bush will change when his father forces him to change. End of story.

There may be a few cosmetic changes but Bush is bound and determined to stay the course. The guy is dumb. He simply wants to pass this disaster off on the next president so he isn't the one who 'cut and ran.' There is a serious pattern in Bush's behavior that can't be ignored. He has a major phony tough guy image of himself. We saw this over the summer with him pushing Israel to attack Lebanon. He won't ever back down because he would feel that it would make him look weak. Americans troops will continue to die because of Bush's arrogence. It really is that simple.

Some people will accept just about any lie, rather than admitting a mistake.

Prior to intervention, Islamic extremists were killing Jews and Americans.

The amazing thing is, that it's possible to pack so many absurdities and outright lies into a single sentence.

• "Intervention" - this was not an intervention, but an unprovoked war of aggression.
• Iraq posed no danger to America before it was invaded.
• Islamic extremists were operating from Afghanistan, not from Iraq. There was no necessary connection between Afghanistans attack on the US, and the attack of the US on Iraq.
• To attribute alleged improvements in security to the attack on Iraq rather than the retaliation against Afghanistan is absurd. But...
• The situation in Israel is not improved in any way. If anything it's worse than it was before the attack on Iraq. There are still Jews being killed there.
• There are Americans being killed in Iraq currently.

Depends on how you define victory.

Victory - achieving the goals which drove the military action.

Defeat - redefining victory until you can claim you've won, no matter how absurd the logic.