[GAsux]

Kahljorn,
Yeah thanks for pointing that out becuase that's exactly the point I was making. I'm far more naive then you and Sean Penn and I were under the impression that it was a model utopian society before the war. God job of cleverly pointing out how ridiculously niave I am.

Im not remotely making the case that life under Saddam was great. In fact, I made no reference to pre-war Iraq at all. My point is, regardless of how horrible Saddam was there was not boderline civil war. The regime was able to maintain stability, even if at the barrell of a gun.

For democracy to work, and for the Iraqi's to adopt and accept a system foreign to them, they're going to need a level of security that currently does not exist. My point is, you can't expect everyday Iraqis(ie. non-insurgents) to continue to beleive that the whole idea of democracy is worth it if as a result they run the risk of being blown up every time the go out in public.

The more chaos the insurgency can create the more difficult it will be to convince Iraqis that the U.S. sponsored government can protect them. When you can't protect them with the number of troops on the ground now, it doesn't seem to bode well for near term force drawdowns in the country.