What ever happened to the catch phrase:

[SHRED]

"Winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people"

Too bad it really was, "exploding the hearts and minds out of the Iraqi people", all along.

:cry:

[rman]

1. many hearts, minds and souls have been lost

:(

[neoblues]

2. The Iraqi people just might be lucky?

Lucky that Republicans don't give in to their first instincts; otherwise there'd be no iraqi people to "cause" "us" "problems".

Really, I estimate that within the Republican base, at least, there is either a majority or near majority of individuals who, if they had a clean, easy way to "disappear" the whole country (and beyond), wouldn't hesitate.

Fortunately, there are no such weapons of mass disappearance, and even if there were, world opinion--which normally isn't of consequence to most Republicans--helps to restrain them. Even moreso, many other Republicans don't imagine themselves to be behind the murder of tens of thousands of Iraqis--and even imagine themselves kind and caring people--and therefore wouldn't choose to kill all the remaining Iraqis outright.

The point, however, is that there are incredible numbers who would... and given which type of Republicans usually end up getting elected, the Iraqis might indeed be somewhat lucky to be being allowed to continue to exist--and the biggest reason they have been, among those elected ones, isn't public opinion or Christian morals--it's the absence of such an awesomely powerful, easy/inexpensive/clean American W.M.D.... (let us pray/hope the weapon's designers don't come up with some kind of space-based "disintegration" ray that can easily, instantly depopulate every human within a neatly defined area such as a set of national borders...)

It's easier to restrain the beast within if we lack the power to implement such base instincts--which are especially prevalent among Republicons (particularly the people who tend to be Republicans/Conservatives and who tend to live in Red-states driving a Pickup Truck with a Gun Rack, and who lack experience with people of other racial identity, culture, language and nationality).

[JohnnyRingo]

3. They changed it to "winning the war" which sounds more tangible

since winning those hearts and minds is obviously out of the question now.

We own Baghdad, the airspace over their country, and control exports and imports. The war is over, and we won in the military sense.

Since the Buxh admin has no intention of going anywhere, they use sound bites to imply that we'll keep fighting there until the Iraqis love us. It makes no sense to me, but I'm not a Bushbot.

Someday however, we're going to wake up and realize that troops in the Green Zone are what strategists call "surrounded". Imagine George Custer's dismay when he noticed Natives on all sides of his position.

Unlike Custer, I'm sure we can call an air strike to bomb an exit path, but I see this scenario more likely than the "bowing at our feet" vision.