I don't for a second believe the military is as fucked up as people think. Sure, operations go bad, and sometimes the politicians ask for too many "restrictions" which ultimately screw up mission bigtime. Here's my take, independent of neither liberal nor conservative viewpoints:

Abu Ghirab (did I spell that right, Anthony?) was PLANNED. Yes, planned. Why? To cover a covert operation happening somewhere else. Don't think for a split second the U.S. military hasn't figured out the media to the point where they can tie strings to it's arms and play puppet. After all these years? They most likely have a war room inside the Pentagon dedicated to nothing more than media reactions and media manipulations. I would guess that Special Ops was about to pull off something big, and Abu Ghirab would simply be too good for the media to pass up. The media, as we all know, can be selectively narrow-visioned. When the shit is going down, that's all they can see and smell. If you can strategically place the shit in a way which deflects from a real operation, you're faking out both the media AND the terrorists.

All of the money going to the war in Iraq ISN'T going to Iraq. Remember, we're talking about politician with only one thing in mind -- re-election. In order to fund worldwide operations against terror cells, the money must be laundered, funneled into the War in Iraq and diverted from there. Whenever shit goes down in Iraq (see above) I can't help but think that, somewhere else in the world, an entire cell is being wiped out by a team like SeAL 6.

Bush is a fucking idiot. Yep, 100%. But look at his cabinet. It's literally built for war. It's going to be interesting to see if Colin Powell runs for President. He apparently left on bad terms, but we don't really know that for absolute certain, since word are just words. It's possible he left early enough to distance himself from any damage this administration was bracing to incur. This invasion, and it's larger goal, has been in the planning stages even before Bush was first elected in 2000 (the "warhawks"). Sometimes to set-up the larger victory, one must intentionally lose the smaller ones. I'm not saying that losing thousands of lives in Iraq is "small", but the way these people think, it's short-term damage they are willing to accept to gain a long-term advantage. Like I said, it's the way "they" think.

Bush never said Iraq was going to be "simple". Hate him all you want, but right off the bat he said it was going to be long and messy. It's the MEDIA that glorified our quick movement into Baghdad. The generals knew better. Yeah, there was a problem with something called "armor", and a problem with a lack of troops. But war is war. If one dissects D-Day, it was nearly a complete fuck up -- and they had been planning that invasion for a while. Shit is going to happen. But look at the size of Iraq, bordering how many U.S. friendly nations? Turkey? They've got their own agenda. Same with the Saudis. Despite that, and all the bad press, the military has done one helluva job with a very difficult situation.

The ultimate goal is Iran. Take a look at a map. See Iran? What countries border it to the East and West? Yep -- Iraq and Afghanistan! Turkey to it's Northwest, Pakistan to it's Southeast. The countries to the north? We'd let Russia handle them. The simple fact is, no country in the history of civilization has ever -- EVER -- won a two front war (oceans don't count as a front). Iran's leaders are crazy, but not stupid. I'm certain a lot of what's going on inside Iraq is Iran's doing. If Iraq falls to the U.S. completely, Iran is finished!