In article ,
Jim Logajan wrote:

Mark Hickey wrote:
[...] willful ignorance of history.

Speaking of history (and ignorance, I suppose), I believe _the_ reason
stated for invading Iraq was to neutralize their WMD.

Nope. It was one of a list of a dozen or sixteen items, and not the
first on the list. Mind, the press in general grabbed that one item and
ran with it, pretty much ignoring the rest of the list, including things
like Iraq's open and long-time ongoing support for terrorism all over
the place, having started and fought a couple three wars with neighbors,
and so on.

None found.

Not quite. Actually several bits, here and there, mostly leftovers from
the Iran/Iraq matches of the 80s.

Don't forget that essentially every national (as in various nations in
both hemispheres) intelligence service figured from the evidence they
managed to dig up that if they didn't have WMDs in stock and ready to
use (the majority consensus), they could gin 'em up pretty quickly. Iraq
certainly showed no reluctance to use chemical weapons in particular
against either the Iranians or against various of their own citizens.
Repeatedly.

Heck, Saddam's generals pretty much all believed that he had them; and
the division next to them had the weapons. They were wrong on that, but
he had his own military going there.

This is all open-source information.

So why are U.S. forces still occupying that country?

See below.

Isn't the job done?

Nope.

Wouldn't make much sense to drop things and let some Saddam wannabe
start the whole thing over again.

The last few months, if you talk to those serving on the the ground,
things have been turning around a bit; enough in some used-to-be very
bad areas that the politicians have a chance to get a grip. If progress
continues in this vein, maybe some other of the politicians and
bureaucrats might be able to get their collective thumbs out and get
something done right.