Oldie but a Goodie...
(from our host, Sir Winston..)

COLD, HARD OPTIMISM
John, you said that: "We took the country and now the problems are ours until/unless we find a way to extricate ourselves." Indeed you are right and we owe it to the people of Iraq, and more importantly, to the world, to leave Iraq in better shape than we found it. It seems we agree and we also agree that it may be more difficult than the average joe believes, but I'm not sure that the Bush Administration sees this as an easy task, or takes it any less seriously than you would like.

As I said before: Just don't expect to be loved - the attempts to portray Iraqis as primarily just grateful to America for getting Saddam out is naive and contains an element of wishful thinking. We took the country and now the problems are ours until/unless we find a way to extricate ourselves.