ImGod

Think long term. The majority of the people in the US have declared victory and moved on. Lacy Peterson is the new hot issue.

The goal was not to destroy the US militarily, but to apply the right amount of pressure to allow it to destroy itself. To get us to trade our freedoms for security. To disrupt business and travel. To overextend ourselves financially so the next incident causes even greater economic problems and more fear.

We have spent 100 billion dollors in security measures, reconstruction, and corporate bailouts in 2 years, plus another several hundred billion in military expenditures for 2 military campaigns. I don't see these added budgetary expenses ending soon.

We're on a 1 year plan to get back to "normal", they are on a 100 year plan to get us to collapse from our own weight. The US's collective attention deficit disorder (ADD) and our inability to learn why things happen are our greatest weaknesses.

Hubble head

I'd say some are on a 10 year plan but who knows -your analysis seems pretty much on the spot -especially about Americans short term memory probs.

I'm kind of worried one of those rallies could really get out of control. A hundred thousand civilians bum rushing US stations near and in Baghdad with cars, guns, poles or whatever they can swing/throw at us is not impossible. A worst case scenario, yes-probably one of the very worst, but we seem to get a little closer to it every week over there.

Overall, I think we need to quickly split the country into three distinct Iraqi states and give them blueprints for state governments to work out mostly on their own. The US will continue to tie it all together from the top with the military, oil and new federal govt. The states could work out their own diverse issues/laws and leadership important to that group and overall everyone would contribute to the country as a whole similar to things here. Just my armchair opinion...