Opinions, Sirs, can be anything. What separates them is logic and evidence. Nowhere do I say that Iraq is a "blackhole of misery." I do believe it has been incompetently handled by this administration, which is a view many hold and can be supported by evidence. You're attempting to define my view. Now, do you have any evidence for your cyclical view of Iraq?
No, you never said "blackhole of misery". The innuendo though was about as unidirectional as it can get however. You've outlined as incompotent with your selected views and evidence to bolster that opinion. I can find a myriad of views that though mistakes were made along the way, the acknowledgement that war is rarely smooth. and despite that, we have a new democratic country, with its own Consitution, as put together by Iraqis who voted in their own representatives. Do I have to go into how many lives we lost, how long it took for us to get our country up & running? I realize how in today's day & age, we Americans have the attention span of a knat. And I realize the effectiveness of 24/7 doom & gloom reporting highlighting every possible thing that can go wrong, while minimizing ANY substantive successes. That combination is going to make Bush's poll #'s go down. That combination is going to perceive Iraq is embroiled in a civil war, and want change now. That combination is going to make Bush modify his message, to try and educate the folks that "stay the course" does not equal "we're not going to do anything different, and we're going to be there forever".
As far as "evidence" of cyclical view, I can simply reference monthly military casualty reports. They would go up when violence flared, and they'd go down, when we had the upper hand. As high as 141 in 11/04 dropping down to 33 Feb of this year. Iraqi #'s are harder to nail down, and concedingly they have gone up significantly in the last few months, but they were below 1000 in June, over 1000 March - May, and again were below 1000 at the beginning of '06. Point being the #'s didn't consistently go up. They were episodic month after month after month after month. I can also reference press coverage, which included wall-to-wall coverage when the casualties were high, and significant decrease in the reporting of Iraq, when events were unfolding in a positive manner, which included the significant decrease in insurgent activity during the last pair elections, when the Suunis actually took part in the last election, and when the Constitution was passed.
Thus the opinion of a cyclical phenomenon is validated with observation, views, & evidence
