As an aside, I think the US needs exchange of ideas, people and projects regarding Iraq with other countries - in Europe and in the Middle East, first off - not just to clear up the bloody mess that Iraq has turned into but also to come to terms with it and move out a bit of the moral and intellectual bunker where the combination of 9/11, the Bush leadership and the Iraq war has landed so much of a great nation.

Some people will always think the Iraq war was the right response to 9/11, that Saddam had close links with al-Qaeda and was building a huge stockpile of chemical weapons and possibly nukes, that the rest of the world betrayed you and that the US has a right to stay around as long as needed. Okay - it's easy to understand the shock that 9/11 meant (we were appalled too, and many people who have opposed the war effort still know "those attacks can happen again, and it could happen here") but as long as it's just stuck in these "was Saddam a good guy or a bad guy? Are you gonna fight'em or wheedle with'em?" tracks nothing at all is going to happen politically or morally and the carnage will continue,.