That's a bit disingenuous, Chief Chaos. There wasn't a civil war raging in Iraq a year ago. There was a nasty regime in power in Baghdad preventing that happening, and a Kurdish region up North effectively independent.

Helping the country move on from that situation to something less repressive and more stable would have been a pretty difficult problem, and would have needed patience, resolution and imagination, but there is no reason to think it couldn't have been done. A fair number of vicious dictatorships have been dismantled one way and another, and that's a more common pattern than it being achieved through foreign invasion and occupation.

However it's a lot more complicated now. But the bottom line is, if there is a need for outside forces to assist the Iraqis to rebuild their country (and there may well be), the USA is not a suitable country to be in charge of this kind of project, and all the evidence is that the training received by US soldiers does not seem to equip them for this kind of situation.

One thing though - it seems at least possible that having a common enemy, in the shape of the occupation forces, might have the effect of bringing together the people who might otherwise be expected to be against each other in a civil war. This could mean that if/when there is a pull-out by the Americans, for domestic political reasons, there might be at least a chance of a regime that could hold things together, involving both Sunni and Shi'ites, and able to reach a satisfactory deal with the Kurds.