[Binkie]

There won't be an end. The government that's there now is being held up and guided by our government. Like a puppet on a string. Unless the US plans on staying there permenantly, then almost as soon as they finally pull out, whether its next year or ten years from now, the 'democracy' that's been put in place will start to crumble, and crumble quickly. Those people don't understand democracy. Its not something they can comprehend. Even in the other, less tyranical arabic nations, they simply do not understand democracy. They'll play along and pretend they're getting it, and maybe a few of them really do get it, but as soon as the US leaves, everything will start to go to shit. I'm not saying this to deliberately slant the arabic people, I'm just speaking from what I've witnessed first-hand. I lived in the middle east for three years, and until you live there day after day for an extended period of time, dealing with them on a constant, daily basis, in a civilian setting, you'll never really understand how they operate. I had several arabic friends who were very much 'westernized', who spoke english fluently, without even so much as an accent, who went to american, canadian or british schools, who worked for american companies, and even they didn't truly comprehend democracy. In order to truly change their government you have to change their society, and that's not something that can happen in a handfull of years, if ever.

It's interesting how you speculate in absolutes.

The US does indeed plan to be there for a very long period... with a few bases. Not sure if you heard about this or not, but the Defense Department is completely restationing it's bases around the globe to be centered around the Middle East as opposed to all over Eastern Europe (which was appropriate for the Cold War, but does us no good today). So there will be US presence there for years upon years to come, even after our main withdraw.

Interesting that they can't comprehend democracy when all the major groups took part in rallying and voting on the Iraqi Charter this time around, including Sunnis. That the percentage of registered voters who took part in that was even greater than that which took part in the 2004 US Presidential Elections here. That, right there, says they understand democracy more than Americans do.

There are many people in oppressive countries such as Saudi Arabia, such as Egypt who very much understand what Democracy is about in the same way that there were people in former Soviet Republics who understood what Democracy was all about. Look at Ukraine today. Look at the Czech Republic. So now you saying arabs are incapable of understanding democracy is something akin to an old southerner saying, "Why give those people (i.e. African Americans) their freedom? They wouldn't know what to do with it."