Originally Posted by Warwick

A U.S victory?
How about a Coalition victory my friend?

An ignorant, but innocent mistake on my part Warwick. I do appreciate you pointing it out though, as I have much respect and admiration for ALL the coalition forces.

US won the actual war against Saddam Hussain and his redicals but victory over IRAQ is questioned by active insurgency and rising toll in casualties on daily basis.

It can be best described as a settlement, in case US troops start to leave IRAQ in coming years after installing a functioning Iraqi regime. But it is still a long challenge.

As others have stated, victory has already been won. I too believe that Coalition forces will remain for quite some time, but in a much smaller role. If the embedded reporters would start publishing positive news, instead of looking for any fault that the Coalitian and Iraqi military has, the draw down of troops could begin sooner.

As far as victory over IRAQ, the insurgency is slowing losing steam. Completely eliminate it? Realistically, that's out of the question. All societies have a criminal element that must be dealt with on a continuous basis. Regardless of laws, some bozo will always violate them.

Ron

Victory is not merely the termination of an invasion, especially when "Freedom and Democracy" is the war cry.

The insurgency or should I say, terrorism, is also a part of the the campaign.

Till that is over, the successful termination of the invasion is merely one part of the show.

If, at this moment, the US quits, then there will hardly be any "Freedom and Democracy".

The genie is out of the bottle. It has to be put back.

IMO we've won. Now it's time to setup for a long occupation, as we did in Germany, Korea, and Japan.

What needs to happen is we need to have a set ammount of troops stay and rotate them out, while thats going we get the Iraqi Military/Police Force built and have them take care of the house cleaning duties like riots and such, while we take care of the large duties. Basically what we need to do is what we are doing, now all we've got to do is starighten out the media.

now all we've got to do is starighten out the media.

agreed... the only ones who are making us lose the "war" now is the Media and the few people who actually believe them :P lol... the T's aren't really a big threat. They're more like gang criminals just waiting to be slapped :P

I'm not exactly a George W Bush enthusiast. I'm not going to go on and on about how great and wonderful he is as a president. But I just barely saw the speach he just made and one small bit of that struck me (I'm not going to get the exact words, cuz this is from memory): There is such a thing as productive criticism, that sees what is wrong and what could be done better. There is also such a thing as defeatism, that only ever sees the what's wrong and never sees anything right. George's speech writer makes a pretty good summary of what lost Vietnam and what can lose us Iraq. Defeatism in the reporting done by the media. We could argue forever about whether it was right or wrong to go into Iraq to begin with, but the one thing that is no help to anyone is the constant cry for immediate and hasty withdrawal from Iraq. Its reckless and stupid, and anyone must be able to piece together what insane bloody chaos we would leave in our wake leaving now.

Hello,

I've been away from the computer for a couple of days, and I'm just now getting caught up. If I may, let me elaborate on why I originally posed the question. In President Bush's recent speaches he often reffers to "when we achieve victory in Iraq". Now I agree with the majority of you that victory in the traditional sense has already been achieved, but this question reffers to the definition of victory that would allow the soldiers to come home. In my opinion the key is the Iraqi army. I beleive the insurgency needs to be subdued to a level that the Iraqi army can handle, while at the same time training said Iraqi army to handle any future heightened insurgency.

Victory is not merely the termination of an invasion, especially when "Freedom and Democracy" is the war cry.

The insurgency or should I say, terrorism, is also a part of the the campaign.

Till that is over, the successful termination of the invasion is merely one part of the show.

If, at this moment, the US quits, then there will hardly be any "Freedom and Democracy".

The genie is out of the bottle. It has to be put back.

Thats why we Arent leaving. Now.

One of the lessons of the Powell Doctrine was to establish the definition of "victory" before the engagement, not after. rationalizing victory after the fact harkens back to the "Declare victory and leave" tar-baby of the VietNam era.