Huntin Hajis

First let me say that without question I oppose the war in Iraq. At one time I was in support of the war, and thought President Bush had made the right decision to invade Iraq. But it wasn't too long into the occupation of Iraq that I began to realize that something was terribly wrong.

It started with the looting, and the unprotected hospitals. The arms depots which were left unguarded, and the sparse number of troops. The chaos, and the inability to restore basic services. It all began to add up. We went in with too few troops!

I kept waiting for the truth to sink in, and for someone to admit that more troops would have to be sent, but it appears keeping too few soldiers in Iraq is part of the Bush Administration plan.

A very big consequence of not having enough troops in Iraq is that we have grown an insurgency.

The closest analogy is that of antibiotics. If you take too little you just breed super bacteria that no longer respond to antibiotics. By sending in too few troops those troops we have sent in have only acted as trainers for rebel forces which grow in numbers, and strength by the day.

In the meantime we continue to make more, and more enemies with every death, and injury.

No matter how many pieces of candy tossed out to children by troops driving by in their Hummers it isn't going to turn the tide of this war. Iraq is a ticking time bomb, and it was we who set the fuse.

Many of our troops are used as bait. They are instructed to drive through areas in which an attack upon our troops is expected. Once the attack occurs other U.S. units will come in for a counter attack. This is Vietnam all over again. It's a war by numbers, but it is not a war in which we will win. These methods prove that we are understaffed in Iraq, and it's not right to send our troops out to act as bait.

The U.S. military learned a great deal from Vietnam. The use of overwhelming force when occupying a nation is the way to go, but for political reasons the Secretary of Defense has still not been sacked for intimidating our military's general staff into sending so few troops.

The truth is our political leaders smile a great deal, and act like they care about our troops, but are deliberately wasting these troops lives. And because it's Republicans were talking about here they can get away with - wrapping themselves up in the flag, and hoping like hell the media will be too timid to reveal what's going on.

One result of using our soldiers as bait is the stress is creates on our soldiers. By not enjoying overwhelming numerical superiority, and by not creating a passified Iraq we have created a non-stop war in which our soldiers are being hunted.

Our solders natural response is to view anyone who is not one of them as the enemy.

We're now seeing the slaughter of innocent civilians, racist approaches towards viewing Iraqis, and it is all too clear that this can only breed further hatred for our troops.

We either need to send hundreds of thousands more troops over to Iraq, or we need to pull our troops out now. But we all know more troops won't be sent will they. It would make the administration look bad.

We have lost the war folks, let's prop up an interim government, broker a deal with the Kurds, Iran, Syria, and Jordan - and get the hell out while the going is bad!

The civil war there will happen no matter how long we stay - we can't make it not happen no matter how much blood, and treasure we throw at it.

It's not good news, but it's the way it is.