It just so occurs to me that there are far too many terrorist attacks happening within Iraq for my liking.

Is this evidence of incompetency within the planning of the nature of the invasion between coalition influences?

I think it's due to the fact that Iraq has porous borders neighboring terrorism-sponsoring states *cough*Syria*cough*. I bet most of the terrorists aren't native Iraqis. Additionally, you may note that alot more Iraqis are being killed than coalition troops.

Well, Iraqis who're considered to be 'in league' with the coalition troops are usually the targets. The others are 'collateral'.

And I think Derf's question (and your answer) are pretty spot on. The US adminstration made a judgement error in invading Iraq in terms of the 'war on terror'. They turned a relatively secular (the Baath party was Stalinist-fascist and fiercely anti-religious) dictatorship into a brooding nest for terrorist/guerrilla fighter of all sorts.

I agree that most of them are not from iraq itself, but from anywhere they have muslim fanatics really. Apart from those I also think there's a large 'get the invaders out' element that lives among the actual ppl of Iraq too. Have to remember that the US -regardless of their motives now- have been/are depicted as the devil in Iraq and the entire middle east. So most Iraqis (also because of the fundamentalists blowing shit up all the time) will be more glad than glad to see the US go.

Iraq, itself, was already suffering from divisions with its own people. Kurds, Sunis, etc, already hated each other regardless of what Saddam did.

Even with out Americas involvement, civil war would likely have broken out when Saddam died. We just sped up the process.

I agree. I think our involvement sped what was going to naturally happen. I also tend to think that our involvement is keeping the country from collapsing into complete anarchy (a la Somalia). And that it will speed eventual recovery into a functional state.

Of course, I may be an optimist, but that's not something I'm accused of very often. The fact that other nations in the area are conspiring to undermine the stability of Iraq is rather agitating to me. Though we've certainly got a good hand in the creation of the country, it's not exactly becoming a puppet state. Puppet states we don't take the time for mass elections, constitutions, etc. We just leave the current political system in place and make sure the dictator is friendly to us. IE, what happened to Iraq in the first place. :p

Regardless, I'm not sure what can be done. The borders are too large to secure against incursion. Either we spend alot of time and money working on surveillance and rapid response forces for border incursions, alot of time and money on intelligence and seek & destroy type missions after the enemy is inside Iraq, or alot of time and money on missions into neighboring countries to disrupt whoever's organizing the terrorists in the first place. I'd personally prefer the last, but that might end up doing more harm than good. But who am I to say we shouldn't blow the crap out of Syria.

So i gather from yours and 11b's responses that the strategy undertaken by those applicable didn't foresee this problem?

The US has groups of people and organization called "Think Tanks", which the government pays intellectuals and people who specialized in certain topics money to think about things like Iraq. I am 100% sure that the government knew this might be an outcome.

#1 either they didnt care
#2 they took a risk

My guess would be its a little of both. The longer the US is in Iraq the longer we can keep our hands on Iraqi oil. Who knows! Haliburton could be piping millions of gallons of oil out and know one would know.

Thanks for that point.