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Why stop there, Nostatic? Why not expand your canon to include Carl von Clausewitz, Napoleon's Maxims of War, Machiavelli and Otto von Bismarck.

One more time: Many of the voices that bleat "quagmire" incessantly weren't for the war in the first place, so it's hard to believe they would EVER have the patience required. Still others, laboring under the assumption that we could do overnight nation-building in Iraq, are now frustrated that it's taken longer than they expected.

And yet the final group of critics are those for whom NO outcome in Iraq, or Louisiana, for that matter, would be satisfactory. For them, every crisis is the opportunity to oppose the administration, because its very existence is offensive to their leftist ideology. And therefore, because these people believe that the end, in this case, attempting to thwart the Bush Administration, justifies the means, which is continually opposing its efforts and creating the political turmoil that encourages our enemies to persist. And they don't care how many of our people die, at home or abroad.

The capitulation of the Nazis and the subsequent rebuilding of Europe was at least a 20 year process with a willing populace. The rebuilding of public safety, and hopefully, the creation of a stable, democratic government in Iraq, might take only another five years, or it might take ten. Or it might take a hundred. It does NOT matter anymore about the genesis of the situation, OK? We're IN IT ALREADY, stop crying over spilled milk and pointing the finger to advance your own agenda. Iraq's problem is OUR PROBLEM, Liberal, Conservative.