Soooo, that old election then

I'm not sure how much you can trust the media in instances like this. There are always abuses, and in general horrible things play better on television the nice things. I've seen many horror stories from Iraq, but I've also seen a number of encouraging pieces of U.S./Iraqi cooperation and friendship. I just don't think that either of us are able to get a good read on what the situation over there is really like from 8,000+ miles away.

It's certainly a valid point about national experience. America is a bit of a baby isn't it? How much of that prior experience is relevant though? Terrorism is a phenomenon of the twentieth century and at least for the latter half of that America has been fully engaged in the world. We gained allot of experience promoting terrorist during the cold war (Afghanistan etc.), and our law enforcement agencies have done a great job of discouraging domestic terror. We were instrumental in the British plan to overthrow the prime minister of Iran in the mid 1950's...

In the end I don't know what all of this adds up to because I haven't made a proper study of post WWII history. I'm at the end of my store of knowledge on the subject, so I can't really carry the argument any further in an intelligent manner.

I'd like to add that I don't think the US's strategy for fighting terrorists was simply to remove weapons, but also to break down the leadership. While Osama may still be at large, I think one success Bush does have is how well many of the other al-Qaida leaders were tracked and either killed or captured. Prior to the Iraq issue I thought Bush was doing an excellent job of being very precise with his attacks in order to cause the most internal damage to their network with the least physical damage to the region and their citizens. I feel our Afghanistan campaign was very successful.