[Kip Lange]

would you be willing to amend your statement

Absolutely not. The administration does not want to spend any time nation-building in Iraq at all. Having a base in a country is also not exactly the equivalent of "occupying" it.

[Burkeman1]

So all the papers written by the neo cons about using Iraq as a larger base of operations in the entire region are nonsense? We are just gonna go change leaders, destroy the WMD's, and leave within a year or so and democracy is gonna take root? Do you also believe you can commune with your dead relatives by going on the John Edwards show? What if the Iraqi's elect a radical Islamic fundamentalist to lead them (like Algeria did and we were quiet when the Algerian military staged a coup and waged a war that has cost 200,000 lives in the past 5 years)? Yeah- we are just gonna stay for a year.