Perfectly said, Don. Those last 2 paragraphs of yours ought to be wrought in gold and stamped on the front doors of the White House and Congress.

People in the region called "Iraq", an arbitrary set of borders drawn around several different cultures by British imperial ambition, have been dealing with this nonsense for a very long time now. The British were massacring them in the 1920's by strafing and bombing them with the Royal Air Force. Why? For the land and for the oil. The Americans are just the latest arrival in the old "invade-and-exploit" game. Young American soldiers mostly have no idea of that. They were brought up to believe they were spreading "freedom", when all they are really doing is dying on behalf of corporate wealth.