Iraq - Where to Now?

With newspaper reports today suggesting that a pullout [or even a phased one] from Iraq is on the cards in the very near future one has to wonder where that leaves the people and country of Iraq. Abandoned it would seem - and confronting a civil war. That the war is said to have cost the US some US$191 billion [yes! - you read correctly] is one thing. The death and carnage is another. It is almost now beyond doubt that the US - and therefore Australia and Great Britain as willing members of the coalition of the willing - had absolutely no plan, let alone an idea, what would happen once that dreadful war of "shock and awe" got underway and the military forces arrived at the gates of Baghdad. Time magazine has an interesting article on its investigation of how the US embarked on and undertook this entire Iraq debacle