on the war in Iraq

I think Bush is finally getting it. Today, CBS News and perhaps others announced that he is willing to begin accepting benchmarks for the Iraqi government to step up to the plate. As this was his solution several months ago in, I believe, his State of the Union speech or something similar, it's about time he went public with a willingness to accept it. The fact of the matter is that although we keep referring to the Iraq "war" we have no war there. The war ended back when he said the Mission was Accomplished. We won the war. What we've been doing since then is creating a mess that may not be stabilized during the lifetimes of most of us living in the U.S. today. We forgot what we were there for (if anybody ever knew) and abandoned Afghanistan to its warlords when we should have finished that job. Papa Bush knew enough about the Middle East to know to leave Saddam on his throne as long as his own people could stomach him. The idiot now in the White House went in with head held high and empty of anything but his own desires and those of the neo-cons who elected him. We need to support the troops by getting them out of a hot spot we had no business in. And we don't have a war on terror going on in the world, we have a battle with organized bandits with no sense of human empathy. Let's quit acting as if they are something special and treat them as the criminals they are. And that means getting those who are terrorists out of Gitmo and putting them on public trial, then throwing them in a secure penitentiary if they are found guilty.