http://news.brisbanetimes.com.au/iraq-becomes-prime-tra... "The road to Baghdad was a one-way road, it has become a two-way highway," said Mohammed al-Masri, a researcher at Amman's Centre for Strategic Studies.
In a report released in April by the US government, Dennis Pluchinsky, a former intelligence expert in the State Department, said Iraq veterans were the most dangerous because they were better trained than their Afghanistan counterparts.
In the Al-Qaeda camps of Afghanistan, volunteers almost never see real fighting, according to those who have passed through.
In Iraq, if he survives, a Jihadist will have acquired unbeatable experience having been pitted against the world's best army."http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/28/133... "REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: The Democrats could have refused to send a bill forward. We didn't have to fund this war. We're not under any obligation to keep the war going. And yet our leaders took another path. Furthermore, Amy, you may be interested to know that the 2008 budget, which is before Congress today and will be voted on tomorrow, contains another $145 billion for the war, and on top of that, they're putting another $50 billion for the war in fiscal year 2009.
So this talk about ending the war by March or by September belies the fact that the budget has money in it to keep the war going into 2009.
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Our decisions have to be way above politics. We have the lives of our troops at stake here. There's no military victory in Iraq. We're there illegally. The occupation is fueling the insurgency. Democrats can still, after president Bush vetoes the bill, which he will, Democrats can still take the right position, which is refuse to fund the war, use money in the pipeline to bring the troops home."