1. Too Many Soldiers, not Enough of Everything Else

There are roughly 150,000 troops in Iraq at this time. Why are they there? We are no longer fighting a war. Saddam's army has long since died, surrendered or deserted. There is a lot to do in Iraq, no doubt. Security is still a very important issue. There are a lot of important people and evidence that needs to be found. The electricity and other utilities are still in disarray. A constitution needs to be written and ratified. How are soldiers good at any of these tasks? They are not police, nor investigators, nor engineers, nor politicians. Iraq still needs a lot of our help, and we should still be in Iraq, but not our soldiers.

2. If inspectors didn't work, why does blowing everything up work better?

Before the war began, the infamous UN weapons inspector Hans Blix and his team had been scouring the nation of Iraq, looking for weapons of mass destruction. Bush et al felt that either he wasn't doing his job, or Saddam was fooling him. So, the US invaded. During this war, anyone who knew anything about the weapons program went into hiding. Strategic military and government sites, the kind that might have contained evidence to the existence of weapons of mass destruction, were blown up. How is this situation better than before? It seems to me that if there ever was evidence of weapons, the US troops very well might have blown it up. Scientists and government officials are either dead or have fled, fearing prosecution from the US. At least before the war, these people had an address.

3. This is the first Western, Christian, Pro-Israel occupation of Muslim Holy Lands, ever.

This issue goes beyond the people of Iraq. The US knew after September 11th that there are segments of the Islam community that down right hate the West. The result of this action was an invasion of Afghanistan and now and occupation of Iraq. What the US doesn't realize is that while Afghanistan is mostly rocks, Iraq contains some of the most important religious sites in the Islamic faith. A similar analogy would be if a Muslim army occupied the Vatican in Rome, or the Salt Lake Temple.

4. The weapons of mass destruction issue

It is understandable that it will take time to discover the evidence of weapons of mass destruction, particularly when you have to rebuild a country at the same time. The problem is that the reason for the invasion was not just because Saddam had access to or reconstituted a weapons program but because there was an immediate threat to people like you and me because of these weapons. If there are weapons in Iraq, they most likely are very well hidden, perhaps hundreds of feet underground in the desert. But if that is the case, do they pose an immediate threat to Americans? Even when there are inspectors on the ground searching for them? If there are weapons in Iraq, they were safer before the war than after. At least at that point, someone knew where they were, they just weren't telling. Now, that person might be dead or lost. The weapons may be up for grabs. Anyone can stumble upon them, US troops or otherwise. Is the world a safer place with out Saddam? Maybe not. Even if weapons are found, can we ever be sure we've found them all? Can we ever be certain, ever again, that all of the Iraqi weapons are accounted for?