The Iraqi people have shown with a 70% turnout for the most recent election that they want to govern themselves. I think we got what we went out for, and thereby I call this victory.


Question for debate:

In your own words, how do you define victory in Iraq?

Iraq is a republic. The insurgency is still active, but less so, perhaps relegated to becoming a smaller annoyance like the Basque separatists or IRA. To me, anything less is a loss.

Victory for me would be the removal of Islamic law from the Iraqi Constitution.

Nothing but trouble will come if it remains.

In your own words, how do you define victory in Iraq?

I tend to agree with The Whitehouse



Short term victory looks to be almost there, & medium term victory is now conceivable.

Long term victory is still a long way off, though with luck and continued determination from all parties, it now looks possible.

This is still an optimistic and positive position to be in - but nobody should be patting themselves on the back any time soon.

And there is still a debate to be had concerning the means, concerning the media coverage (Are we getting a full picture, a rosy one, or a bleak one? It seems to depend what you read or watch.), and concerning the (at best) questionable rationale that was given to enter the war in the first place.

It may turn out that the coalition did the right thing for the wrong reasons.

This is still a source for worry, as regardless of any moral questions it raises, if the rationale is faulty and the gut feel ended up being right, how do we know that the gut is going to be right next time we're asked to support something they come up with? We can't necessarily trust the rationale, after all.

In this, Blair is worse than Bush, since at least Bush was honest enough to say from the outset that regime change was an objective in itself. Blair knew this wouldn't wash with the British public (or with international law) so he had to spin some extra special nonsense to con us into supporting a war we were more sceptical of from the beginning.

In your own words how do you define victory in Iraq?
I see a US victory in Iraq as when Iraq is a stable democratic nation capable of providing appropriate security to protect itself from internal and external threats while not harboring internal threats to regional neighbors or the US.

The country must be capable of all basic functions of government to support its population. It must have a basis of revenue source functioning to fulfill governments and citizen’s basic needs to ensure the government doesn’t fail or citizens suffer.

Ask the UN to define the conditions Iraq must possess in addition to the above stated and maintain forces accordingly to the mission requirements.