when Bush urged the insurgency to"bring it on". We reap what we sow Mr. Bush. Shame on you.

Ya think? Elvis left the building three years ago shortly after the fat lady finished singing. Somebody might have noticed that something was very wrong when Bush invaded Iraq for no reason, or when none of the asministration's initial predictions about the war came true, or when Bremmer dismantled the Iraqi government, army, police force, and infrastructure, or when looting turned into insurgency and insurgency into cival war, and civil into the catrastrophic failure of the Iraqi state. Now as genocide and ethnic cleansing spreads into neighboring countries and the refugee problem reaches enormous proportions, we are patiently waiting for a report to save the day? Do we really think that that James Baker will do anything but try to save the Bush family? There isn't enough sand left in Iraq to bury our heads in.

Of course not -- the time to save New Orleans was before Hurricane Katrina. Sufficient warnings existed prior to that catastrophic storm, and these should have resulted in a far better job of preparation (just refer to the detailed series of stories from the Times-Picayune newspaper that eerily predicted almost exactly what Katrina wrought). Once New Orleans was largely decimated, "saving" the city became a moot point - all that remains now is reconstruction of something that is a mere shadow of the original.

Similarly, the time to save Iraq appears to have already come, and most likely, passed. Iraq might have been "saved" if the rosy scenario crowd had listened to realists, or if they'd read any history of British involvement in the region eighty years ago.

So, Hurricane Dubya has swept through Iraq, wiping away what was and leaving little in its wake save for escalating violence and suffering. Let's pray it isn't too late to stop the complete implosion of the country -- an unnecessary tragedy caused by the blind, bull-in-the-china-shop "strategy" of the Current Occupant and his acolytes.

Websters first definition for the word "tragedy": a serious play typically dealing with the problems of a central character, leading to an unhappy or disastrous ending brought on, as in ancient drama, by fate or a tragic flaw in this character, or, in modern drama, usually by moral weakness, psychological maladjustment, or social pressures.

Exactly. Iraq as a modern Greek tragedy -- a disaster brought on by tragic flaws in a central character, including psychological maladjustment. EXACTLY.

This is political window dressing to leave Iraq with the best possible political outcome for the US domestically and abroad. No one really cares what happens to Iraq or the people there. We and the rest of the world wrote them off years ago. I thought everyone new this already.

The war was lost in the planning stage. Thank you Mr. Rumsfeld. And his boss thought that it was "mission accomplished" on May 1, 2003,yea right on. What a bunch of nitwits. War President, Decider and a few other titles that he gave himself, he only forgot one: Dumbo!