Imagine yourself in the summer of, say, 2054, and reading a history book with your great-grandkids. Here's the big question: Will President Bush assertion this week - that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has made Americans safer even though no weapons of mass destruction have been found - have withstood the test of time and the scrutiny of historians? That's far from clear. All we can predict for sure is a few paragraphs about how, back in those olden times, the claim was a cornerstone of a bitter 2004 battle for the White House.

Here's why. Standing in front of a political backdrop - "Protecting America" - to underscore his message, Bush made a three-point argument Monday for how the Iraq war had made Americans safer. First, a tyrant had been removed. Second, U.S. efforts to foster democracy were transforming Iraq into "an example" for the region. And third, Iraqi and U.S. forces were fighting terrorists.

Good points, on the surface. But they don't necessarily stand up to deeper scrutiny - or even to the gut reactions of many Americans watching the nightly news reports of a continued insurgency in Iraq. Bush's real message was conveyed by his scant mention of Iraq. It formed only a tiny slice of his wide-ranging recitation of reasons the U.S. is winning the much broader war on terror.

The Baathist Party was a mortal enemy of Islamic extremists, and vice versa. Baathists are secular - in the eyes of the Islamic extremists, they are apostates. And the hatred was returned : the Iraqi army killed thousands of Muslim fundamentalists, mullahs, etc. in their attack on the holy city of Qum.

Now that there is a common enemy - the American invaders - the surviving Baathists and the Islamic Extremists have joined forces, just as the Chinese Nationalist forces under Chiang Kai Shek and the Chinese Communist forces under Mao Tse Tung cooperated against the common enemy and invader - Japan - in World War II.

The U.S.invasion has coalesced the Baathists/pro-Saddam survivors wth the Islamic extremists. They are now fighting together against the U.S.

It would have been better for the U.S. to have concentrated its resources against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The whole world was and still is in favor of that. Even Germany has forces there - Germany which is such a thorn in the side of the u.S. as far as Iraq is concerned. The enemy was al Qaeda, not the Baathists in Iraq.

Also, so the world is better off without Saddam. Sure that's true but that's no reason for the invasion. The world would be better without Kim Il Sung too, and without Robert Mugabe and a number of other brutal dictators. What, all of them will be attacked too? And if not, why not, if the objective is to remove brutal dictators? Even more damning is the fact that the U.S. has clearly supported dictators when it was in its interest to do so. Somoza, Marcos, Pinochet, the Diems and and those corrupt South Vietnamese generals, the Greek generals, so many... Even Saddam Hussein as long as he fought Iran, no matter what he did to his own people.

No, the invasion of Iraq has not made America safer. It has united previously mutually inimical forces into alliance against the U.S. , and has lost the U.S. several key traditional allies. U.K. forces are still in Iraq, but the majority of the people in Britain are agaisnt the war and showed that in the last election; Blair is in deep trouble. The U.K. is the only other provider of significant forces. The Koreans, Poles, Japanese, and Italians have just several thousand each there, and many of those are humanitarian types not fighting troops. It's a quagmire for the U.S.

Quagmire? I dont think so, it may be a war in which we will be committed to for a year to two more, but as we shift security concerns to Iraq then we can diminish our forces. In Vietnam we were propping up a failing government not setting one up and I see this as the difference that turns the quagmire into only a mud puddle. But of course this is my opinion.

You know Jon, I agree with what you said.

I think theres no question that years from now, it will be as hard if not harder to understand what in the world is going on over there.

I think it is great for Saddam Hussein to be out of power, and I think it is great that the country of Iraq is becoming a better place, but now as days go by, and life after life is being lost, is it all worth it? I really dont think so...

I am a firm believer we should have never went to war with Iraq, especially without the concent of the UN, and I defantely do not think we should still be occupying Iraq at any sense.

President Bush has said recently, that his campaign has a clear idea on how to get our troops out of Iraq, but when asked by a reporter what they were he smiled in that rediculous fashion and took another question.

If that didnt scream "uh...i dunno" I dont know what would.


In summary, the men and women over there should forever be regarded as hero's but there leadership and the reason for their lives being put on the line (like the Vietnam war) will ever go down in total scrunity.0