That's not relevant at all. The point was that a disastrous outcome to an invasion of Iraq was widely predicted by anyone who knew anything about the country. How to handle the ensuing choas was a separate question.</blockquote>
Iraqi insurgency rose almost as soon as Baghdad fell, but insurgents didn't begin to inflict a high level of casualty till around September 2003 (cf. <http://icasualties.org/oif/>). As long as a majority of Americans believed that the US military could handle the occupation, it wasn't a disaster for Washington. It's only recently that a majority of Americans lost confidence in that. Even now, while the American sentiments appear to have finally turned against it, there isn't enough action in the streets of America to end the occupation before Bush's term is up.
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>