Well-researched materials and well-written. How the materials were used to form an opinion on how to fix Iraq and win the war against Islamic Fundamentalism is quite debatable.

In Iraq, we made the alleged "mistake" of dismantling completely the military machinery Saddam Husein has built to imposed his dictatorship in Iraq. The writer questioned this move. Members of the military sympathetic to our cause -- the writer argues -- could have been retained and used in rebuilding Iraq into a democracy we want. As a result of this wrong move, members of the military who were disbanded joined the rebels that now create a big problem to our presence in Irag.

In short, retaining a certain degree of "Saddamism" [preserving some of the Dictator’s cultural vestiges identifiable to Iraqis, including using his loyal army to rebuild Iraq rather than disbanding them and forcing them to join the underground] would have been quite helpful if not necessary in the "westernization" of Iraq that we spent billions of dollars to achieve, but not quite, up to now.

However, in our war against terrorism, we have succeeded in getting rid of Saddam Hussein with his hidden WMD he planned to use in his undeclared war against the United States, just as we and the Western world now aspire to get rid of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the "Terror of Teheran" who is determined to use his WMD [one of them is a nuclear arsenal he is now building] to wipe Israel off the map.

To "westernize" Iraq is but secondary if not just a consequence of our main objective of getting rid of Saddam Hussein [and currently of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] which we have in no unmistakable terms, succeeded. In getting rid of the "Terror of Teheran", we also hope to succeed, like how we succeeded in eliminating the "Terror of Baghdad", even though it would mean war.

And yet, in our conquests of Iran and Japan, even though we did not differ in our use of formidable force to vanquish the enemy, we were contradictory in our desire to "westernize" both "conquered" countries.

In our occupation of Japan, unlike what we could have done for the "westernization" of Iraq [retain part of "Saddanism"] but we did not do, we did it for the "westernization" of Japan. Emperor Hirohito’s Shintoism that built a war-like Japan that lasted for centuries, was COMPLETELY eradicated which in Iraq we are saying we should have retained a certain comparable degree of "Saddamism" to rebuild and "westernize" Iraq. Instead, Shintoism as once the center of Japanese way of thinking and the core value of patriotism or love of country, was forbidden. This war-like mentality was no longer taught in Japanese schools, and in the manufacturing industry, it was replaced by the concept of free enterprise for manufacturing or producing goods for Japan’s international trade instead of producing massive war materials, in the name, and for the glory, of the Emperor.

To sum it up, in Iraq, we are saying that we needed a certain degree of "Saddamism" to "westernize" Iraq. But in Japan we are also saying quite the contrary -- that not a semblance of Shintoism was ever retained in the life of the modern Japanese or ever allowed by the United States to rebuild Japan into what it is today.

So tell me, which way did we go wrong …

In the sixth paragraph, first sentence of my comment, "our conquest of Iran and Japan" should read "our conquest of Iraq and Japan ..." I apologize for this typographical error.

The way to fix Iraq is to give them freedom from US - you know, the U.S.. That's how we win this non-war!

There was a time when many of their people loved us and wanted us to come and help them. But enough is enough. I think they want us out.