I'm going to answer a question with a question...

F. Ryan asks:  "Can you imagine being an OIF veteran watching Mosul fall as ISIS closes in on Baghdad?"

My response:  Did we, any of us, actually think it was going to turn out any differently?

Let's look at that tired old chestnut of an argument just one more time... and we can forget all the tangential crap about WMDs and terror connections, because it has almost nothing to do with the actual question being raised... and that argument is "Should we have gone into Iraq in 2003 in the first place?"

Knowing what we do about American and Western history over the last fifty years, can we honestly say that the US, or any Western nation, had the fortitude and determination to overthrow the Hussein regime in Baghdad AND replace it with a functioning system of government before the money and public support ran out?  I don't care who is in office, either... Republican or Democrat... no one was going to command the sort of long term support it would have taken to win the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people enough to establish a functional democratically elected government in Baghdad. Period, end of story.

I'm sorry, but I feel more and more vindicated about my concerns that I voiced all the way back in 2003 and since.Ten plus years wasn't enough to do it, and thousands of American lives wasn't enough, and two million civilian deaths wasn't enough... so what would it have taken?  Would ANY of it have been worth it at any time?

I want an answer here, by the way... not in a text.