We paid an extaordinarily high price for control in Iraq, and then someone assigned a timeline to a conditions-based withdrawl.

Now we get to watch as the gains and sacrifices of the past are negated for politics. It's shameful.

The dictator you know is better than the Islamo-facist you don't know.

Once again, the US has spent blood and treasure without adequate consideration of the region's culture and ethnic issues.

Wonder how it would have turned out back in 2003 if, instead of invading, we'd simply had Bush and Saddam meet, face to face, and Bush tells Saddam: "Hey bud, knock off the support of terrorist and screwing with Americans and American interests. Do what you need to do to keep a lid on the crazy-assed ethnic groups in your f'ed up country but quit screwing with us. I have a hundred ways to make you and your whole family very dead without putting a single American on your soil. Don't forget it."

Couldn't have turned out any worse, and we wouldn't have spilled American blood in the process.

Iranians will fill the void.

Saddam wasn't sponsoring any terrorism, he barely had the ability to keep Iran at bay. Desert Fox effectively neutered Saddam.

Obama tried to extend the war as late as December 15 2011. Now we're going to pay for our hubris again (for the 30-something time).

Iran and Russia will back their puppets du jour and will ensure their interests are secure.

We never came close to beating al Qaeda; in fact what we really did was force them to franchise. Our arrogance is our greatest weakness

Things could get pretty interesting. We basically allowed, and possibly encouraged, the Saudis to support the Syrian rebels. Now that the rebels in Syria have hit a wall and are being pushed back in many places, they're wandering over into Iraq. I suspect Iran will provide support to the Iraqi government, and since the Saudis hate Iran, they may very well want to continue supporting the rebels against any army backed by Iran.

For some decent al Qaeda reading, google "What is al Qaeda Doing Next". It's an article written by LTC Adrian Bogart about the move to a franchise model. Pretty good analysis

Where is JAM now????

Two informational and complementary accounts of how we came to this state of affairs in Iraq.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/06/iraq-extremists-mosul-american-invasion-legacy.html
http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-iraq-debacle-1402615473
Nauseating at every level.

Never should have invaded to begin with. Saddam was neutralized.

Bin Laden was the enemy. Not Iraq. Many saw this coming. We couldn't hold it. Many knew it then.

It is impossible to fix this without fixing the underlying issue and unless we're willing to eliminate islam, we're not going to fix it.

Islam (in its wahabbiest state) is incompatible with other cultures. It wasn't always this way, but as it is now, we need to take out the Saudi regime and replace them with groups willing to stand up against this barbaric practice.

What's going on in Iraq is no surprise. What did we think was going to happen?

It's not a surprise- but at the time of invasion the world was convinced that removing Sadam was right, and once in we had 2 choices; abandon it all, or withdraw based on conditions. bo tried to split the difference for political gain (same as he has in Afghanistan) and that's what hurts the most.

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It's not a surprise

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It certainly shouldn't be a surprise considering it was the reason GHWB didn't order a full scale invasion in 1991 even though he had the support of all global and regional military powers (other than Soviet Union, Iran and China). Weren't Cheney and Rumsfeld in the room when that decision was made then? What changed in 2003 other than Iraq being even less powerful than it was in 1991?

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GHWB didn't order a full scale invasion in 1991 even though he had the support of all global and regional military powers (other than Soviet Union, Iran and China).

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No he did not. None of the Arab League nations supported any military mission beyond ejecting Iraqi military from Kuwait. They were half hearted participants in the operation and tactically contributed little more than translators.

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Weren't Cheney and Rumsfeld in the room when that decision was made then?

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Cheney was SecDef in 1991 but Rumsfeld had no role in the GHWB administration. Why drag him into it? He had nothing to do with foreign policy from the time he was Reagan's special envoy to Iraq in 1983 until becoming SecDef in 2001.

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It certainly shouldn't be a surprise considering it was the reason GHWB didn't order a full scale invasion in 1991

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Want to comment on that? They knew why it wouldn't work then. What changed?

But, I clearly didn't remember Rumsfeld's role in the first if what you say is correct (and I assume it is).

Once in and Saddam was toppled, we should have left all low level leadership and military in place, and work on finding a legit puppet/pseudopuppet to put in. And not Challabi. But hind sight is 20-20.

I have often wondered about the abandonment of formal declaration of war (i.e. Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution--pretty simple, says Congress has the power to declare war) and the long term affects of GW 1 and GW 2.
Should we have not done either without a formal declaration and if such a declaration, what would the difference have been?

The bigger question remains if the sectarian war will grow in size pulling the whole region into play on a larger scale a la Saudi, Iran, Jordan, Turkey, Russia, Israel. Don't forget us.

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The bigger question remains if the sectarian war will grow in size pulling the whole region into play on a larger scale a la Saudi, Iran, Jordan, Turkey, Russia, Israel. Don't forget us.

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Crap. Why not? We missed WW3 in the Cold War. But here is the opening many (not just US citizens - Russian, Chinese, Iran, Saudi, Israeli) have looked for to rewrite the boundaries and spoils leftover from WW2.