We're making money off of the war? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23578542

Could not agree with you more Grey Acumen! Well stated.

So the Iraq war is another Vietnam. A long drawn out defeat. 40 years on.

94 was a completely different time in Iraq.  What we face now, is nothing like what he was describing would have happened back in 94.  That was 8 years before the second war and things were different.  We had allies, and we had Iraq who constantly broke sanction after sanction imposed after the 1st gulf war.  It is not impossible and we are making progress, it just take time. 

@grey... erm...

I wouldn't say it was about 'getting' oil, though that may have been one of the original motivating factors - I don't think the Bush administration in their hubris understood what a hostile environment they were walking into. But there are a few things you should consider:

1. The people making money off of this war are weapons contractors and mercenaries - which are big, evil corporations.
2. Oil prices spiked as a direct result of the war - there wasn't some magical dry up. Higher oil prices can = greater profit. I'm not making any claims about that, because frankly I don't know enough about oil distribution methods to make a real argument about it, but I'm pretty sure there are plenty of ways to make money in a situation like this without directly seizing oil supplies - cutting down the world's supply makes the oil you already produce more valuable, for example.
3. You almost got the bellowing point right, but you missed the mark. We're using a traditional army to fight a guerrilla war in a country that is mostly hostile to us, which has the tendency to create a drawn out, nasty affair with lots of civilian deaths - it's just that the guerrilla army isn't the escaped terrorists, its the Iraqis hostile to an invasion. You'd think we'd have learned the lesson after Vietnam... Or even learned the lesson of the general futility of that policy from our own god damn Revolutionary War. Anyways, the fact remains that the information indicating the WMDs and terrorists has shown to be incredibly shoddy on its own, regardless of the fact that they weren't found. Basically the pretext of the invasion was idiotic, even before the method was idiotic. Also, I'm not sure how you're pegging that on the media - Bush pretty clearly announced "We're gonna go in and get them WMDs!" TO the media, so if that's an issue, well, it's his fault.
4. This goes to kaza as well - though I'm not 100% sure you weren't being sarcastic. While Saddam may have been an evil shithead, an external removal of him by force has only made the on-ground situation worse. Much like in Afghanistan, what was formerly a situation where people were under a fucked-up imposed set of rules by a very powerful government (clearly not a good situation) has now become a situation where there essentially is no order, and no assurances - while before if you followed the fucked up sets of rules, you were fairly safe, now anyone can be killed or kidnapped for basically nothing at all. Regardless of a semi-foothold in Baghdad, the current regime has no legitimacy in the eyes of the people, precisely because it was more or less created by the United States. It's difficult to trust a democracy that wasn't created by the people it governs - and if you take a look at historical precedent, it's been a repeatedly hugely unsuccessful endeavor. So basically, while Saddam may have been an evil fuckhead, the invasion replaced him with something worse.

I havn't read all the posts, but I think a majority of posts are just trying to rewrite history after the fact. I remember right after 9/11 something like close to 90% of the country were screaming for somebody's head to pay for the tragedy. Now lets imagine you were the president of the most powerful nation on earth, tasked with the responsibility of keeping Americans safe at all costs. A MAJORITY of your intelligence agencies and european allies present slam dunk evidence and you didn't act on it, and Saddam was still in power today and some other tragedy happend it will be all you revisionists screaming for Bushes head. I don't have any love for some of his decisions, but he did what he felt was right. So Saddam is still in power because we havn't invaded we still believe he has WMDs, the Iranians are very threatened they are further along with their own weapons program than now, the Isrealis are also very uncomfortable and threatened, that could be an alternate reality. So Bush is damned cos he acted and he is damned he he didn't act, he's in no win win situation.

Choirsoft theeye,

High Oil prices is not a direct result of the Iraq war, like I said revisionists will like to blame everything on the war. I don't like the war either but truth be told.
Oil is up because of the perfect storm of, a combination of factors mainly due to supply and demand and a little group of capitalists known a speculators and finally a weak dollar. The world produces more oil today than at anypoint in history, close to 90million barrels a day. Demand is strong and supply is tight and at peak capacity. I don't want to go into how speculators bid the price up I'll leave it for anothe day but there you have it.

  I disagree with this statement.  While there was (ultimately questionable) evidence that WMDs were possibly being created in Iraq, there was little evidence of terrorist links, which really cuts the 9/11 connection out - the rage for that allowed us to invade Afghanistan, which was a questionable move, because most of what was done there was quickly undone, and we left an already crumbling country in an even greater state of decay (I wasn't one of the ones screaming for blood).  Furthermore, there are many other nations (see: North Korea) more hostile to the US without terrorist links and with a much clearer indication of nuclear capabilities, so the justification for invasion of Iraq seems flimsy at best.  I also question that a "majority" of the intelligence agencies and european allies were presenting "slam dunk evidence" - that sounds pretty revisionist to me as well.  As far as I could tell, no new indications of WMDs had emerged for, well, a long time, and there was no more indication that Iraq was a threat than 5 years previously.  What there wasn't five years previously was a psychological hook in the American people needed to send them to war, which emerged with the 9/11 attacks.  Finally having something to replace the Soviets as an evasive international threat that justified almost any action, the US went straight back to its interventionist foreign policy that it had practiced for the majroity of the 20th century.

 Fortunately for us and unfortunately for the Bush administration, it was so sloppily done this time that even Americans didn't entirely buy into their bullshit.

Well as I said - I frankly didn't know enough to say anything definitive. That part of my argument was pure speculation. Also, stop calling people who disagree with your version of reality "revisionists". It's petty, unhelpful and arrogant. I was mocking you a bit when I did it in the above response.

 EDIT: Well, actually, I apparently didn't post quite what I thought I did/meant to.  But I was mistaken and stand corrected.

Its your right to feel free to believe whatever you choose to thats what makes us a great nation. This arguement will not be settled today nor in the near future so lets agree to disagree and frankly move on.