I guess it might be worth it IF we come out of this with a democratic government, but I don't know of any case where that has happened in the past when we've gone into an armed conflict. Yes, we may have had an "election" and perhaps it was semi-democratic, but we've had to prop up those governments ever since because the root cause of the hatred and violence in the countries involved isn't dealt with.

Each country is different, but in Iraq there are at least 5 large ethnic groups that have been fighting for centuries against each other and killing each other - one century one is in control; the next century another is in control; etc.

What do you do when faced with that kind of situation? It's like the Bosnian situation ... guess what? It's still a hotbed of violence and killing ... it's just that we don't care about that any more now we have a new war to think about. Or Afghanistan -- we might have to do something there again real soon as the government is losing control of the situation.

We've got to help these countries deal with the basic issues here, not just take out the current no-good-nik and put another in his/her place.