Saddam is dead, hung after a trial. The Baath Party is banned, broken and scattered to the winds. The new government has re-integrated some Baathists, but the Baath Party is dead.

The Iraqi Army of 2003 dissolved during the war. Major elements of that army had melted away to wage guerrilla warfare against the US and the US-backed Iraqi government. That insurgency was broken, its members mostly dead, some exiled, some surrendered. A good chunk of these switched sides in 2006-07, the Iraqi Awakening. Switching sides, they gave up their ambition of restoring Sunni rule in Iraq.

Islamic terrorists, some Iraqi some not, carried on an Islamic insurgency, creating among other groups the Islamic State of Iraq. They're dead too.

Sadr's Mahdi Army was partially brought into the government, partially forced into exile. Sadr himself had to flee to Iran until recently.

Compare that to Vietnam. The VC were wiped out by 1968, but the NVA was not. Under Nixon, we handed over a lot of the fighting to the ARVN, but the ARVN was never able to wiped out the NVA in South Vietnam, never mind North Vietnam. The Paris Accords left the NVA in control of half of South Vietnam.

Even if, after we're gone, Sadr ousts Maliki and raises the Iranian flag over Baghdad, we won the war.

The fact that we won the war does not say that the war was a good idea. Increased Iranian influence is a legitimate reason to say that the war was a bad idea.

Jeez, I'd hate to see what losing looks like.

Obama seemed to recognize the strategic and moral impact of civilian casualties. This recognition didn't seem to have a huge practical impact on his Pakistan and Afghanistan policies, however. Drones are a part of that problem. A drone might bomb a village with a few Taliban, and leave a ton of civilians dead.

...are firmly esconsed in Tel Aviv, using our tax dollars to send hasbarites like you to come here and hurl "anti-semitic" invectives at anyone who criticizes their Nazi actions.

Sorry, that has long lost its sting. And Israel's time is about up - protestations from your ilk notwithstanding.

The lady doth protest too much.

We all know who/what you are and your ploy is no longer effective. Perhaps you didn't read the hasbara cookbook thoroughly enough to realize that if you repeat the same meme over and over again, the audience starts to recognize the patterns and knows you for who you are.

Cute, picking a monicker like "Marine Rifleman" to add credibility to your BS. How's that working for you?

My comments above were to a poster named "marinerifleman", whose trolling posts appear to have been deleted while leaving my responses to him intact, which leaves the implression that I am responding to your post - which, of course, I am not.

The recent anger in Egypt at the onslaught that they perceive on their kin in Palestine shows that the situation has far-reaching impact - one significant enough to derail the Egypt/Israel treaty. This was their last friend and ally in the region, once they had squandered the Turkish alliance with the Flotilla incident.

The Israeli-Palestinian issue is no side-show. It is part and parcel of the tinderbox, and ultimately the spark that will bring this entire fiasco to its inevitable and unfortunate conclusion.

Many of us had high hopes for President Obama. Many of us believe that he is well-intentioned. However, most of us are extremely disappointed in what he has demonstrated so far.

The best one could defend him is by saying that he underestimated the power of the establishment and overestimated, probably from inexperience and naivete, the magnitude of change he was promising to bring about. Hope and change quickly changed to hoping for some small change being left in our pockets.

Many of us feel that he said what was politically expedient to get himself elected knowing that the majority of the nation wanted these wars to end, the Patriot Act revoked, and Gitmo closed down, with solid steps to restore our economy and bring back our lost jobs. Instead, we got expanded wars, more attrocities from the growing police state, and Gitmo may never close down until everyone inside is dead. Meanwhile, unemployment continues to skyrocket - I read somewhere that only 46% of the US is currently employed! Most of us also didn't expect the continued bailout of the banksters at the expense of our middle class.

Most of us have also come to realize that it doesn't matter much whether a Republican or a Democrat is in the Whitehouse, our foreign policy continues unchanged - to the detriment of the nation.

My interest in Professor Walt comes from his laying out exactly this thesis in his book, that the reason our foreign policy is so screwed up is because of the Israel Loby, which is instrumental in the destruction of the US, and ironically, Israel as well. Most people don't realize that our domestic policy is completely enslaved to our foreign policy, as is our economic policy.

All the welfare stuff is great to have - unless you are already mired in trillions of dollars of debt with no exit in sight - and sinking deeper every day. We have lost our manufacturing to China and others, through no fault of China - just corporate greed. Unless we can bring that manufacturing back to the US, I don't see how we will ever come out of this mess, but that has to be our #1 priority - not these wars of choice or fidlling with welfare crumbs as we collectively spiral into the great abyss.

So, while I am happy to hear a foreigner have good things to say about a US president (specially after the disaster that was George W Bush!), I do not share your enthusiasm for him - and I suspect that I am not alone.