Reply #3: Keep war

[dave_p]

Don't assume that most Americans appreciate the costs of occupation. Occupation risks sounding like just an ongoing business-as-usual situation: think of the occupation of Germany and Japan, outstandingly successful ventures from the US standpoint. The US does occupy, sometimes effectively.

War, however, involves losses. And it includes losses to your own side. And I fear most Americans are more concerned with that than the injustice of the operation or the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. War conjures up visions of Vietnam, occupation doesn't (and South Vietnam was occupied as much as Iraq today - rather more, in fact).

Both terms need to be used: the White House is throwing away soldiers' lives in a futile and criminal war, while Iraqis are dying and seeing their assets looted under a criminal occupation compounded by an invasion-triggered civil war.