Sarge you served two tours, one kosovo and I guess the other in Iraq, so you know what happened there, and I believe you know how your peers feel about the war.
But when you say, "we know we forced AQ to expend their manpower and money in their own backyard, thus keeping them from executing attacks on our homes.", you're repeating pro-war rhetoric. I believe, you believe it, but that doesn't make it fact.
How in hell would you "know" what AQ would or would not do? Or even what their capability to do, is? All you "know", is what they did seven years ago, with the capabilities they had then. It appears even our Military Intel and the CIA, isn't quite sure of what AQ can do, or even who AQ consists of.
If you use the Bush/Pentagon method of labeling all the "bad guys" AQ, it ups their strength and numbers on paper, but it's a lot more complicated than that. There's a shitload of different groups that hate us(U.S.) for various reasons, and even more that want to use us as the bogey man to achieve their own ends.
Fortunately for us, and the rest of the world, these groups can't seem to work together for more than a short time... probably because they are in a constant internal power struggle, of/with people that have different objectives.
Personally, I think we should have been finishing the job in Afghanistan, instead of fucking around in Iraq, but I also realize we broke it and have a responsibility to try and fix it, as much as the people of Iraq will allow us to. But like I said, that's just my
