guys...it don't matter about the exact number of how many are dead. TOO many.....and it is useless to quibble over semantics about whether "not winning" = "losing"....it is, simply, a big mess because we (meaning Republican strategists) either didn't understand Iraqi politics, or failed to get GW to listen to them.

We took the lid (Saddam)off a cauldron where the major groups hate each other and care more about Sunni or Shia 'power' than about Iraq as a country. And on top of this, most of BOTH groups have come to dislike US and assume that our presence there is a major reason a lot of their friends & relatives are dead!....And no one could see this coming?

We have been at this longer than WWII. We can barely IDENTIFY the enemy. We have troops on their 3rd deployment, enlistments way down, and mountains of equipment piled up in Alabama, waiting to be refurbished from desert fighting,....we are spending 5-6 BILLION a month...(week?)¹ to have a damned STALEMATE? THAT seems a lot like 'losing' to me...but who am I to 2nd guess all those experts?




¹ remember the words of Everett Duerksen..."A billion here, a billion there...pretty soon we're talking about real money!"