kurty[B]

Aside from the oil. I think Bush thought he was playing a game of Risk 5 years ago. He might have thought that having bases in Afghanistan and Iraq would leave a strong foothold for a possible confrontation with Iran, and also having a presence to try and mediate any Pakistan/India nuclear disputes (yes those countries still have problems with each other). I think Bush honestly thought if we got rid of Saddam the Iraqis would celebrate and welcome us to their country, and we could move on. I don't think he realized that they would retaliate.

Every Colonel I talked to a year ago while in Iraq was not thinking about "if we invade Iran", but "when we invade Iran what am I going to do to keep my forces alive". The next administration has to deal with this mess, and it's not going to be as easy as "pull out all our troops now!". I hate to say it, but by putting our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan Bush has directed most of terrorist attention there. Pulling out all our forces would redirect attacks to our soil. So, we can have 3-4 or more people die each day over there, or have a few hundred to thousand die on our soil, and we go back to the "I can't believe this, we have to retaliate some how!" mentality and we make some bold move, and end up in the exact situation we are in now (democrat or no in office). Remember, after 9/11 even most Democrats bent over backwards to permit going to war.

I feel sorry for our next president. No matter what they do they are going to get a bad rap because of Bush. If they pull out completely the people of this country will hate them, if they leave troops there, the people will hate them. I honestly don't know what to do or have a resolution to the situation. Aside from changing my life to try and use as little oil based energy products as I can, and starting with pushing my city and county officials to get them to change the energy consumption habits of both.