No matter what your position on the Iraq war is, the bottom line is the United States is trying to rebuild the nation of Iraq. Many dedicated people and soldiers alike are trying their best to accomplish this herculean task. But generally speaking things are not going as well as we expected in Iraq.

Iraq Reconstruction -- Mix of Progress, Problems and Uncertainty probably describes most accurately the situation.

Loss of a functioning educational system. A 2005 UN study revealed that 84% of the higher education establishments have been "destroyed, damaged and robbed".

Iraq’s Schools Suffering From Neglect and War

"Iraq's Education Systems Denies Children Education"

The intellectual stock has been further depleted as many thousands of academics and other professionals have fled abroad or have been mysteriously kidnapped or assassinated in Iraq; hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, other Iraqis, most of them from the vital, educated middle class, have left for Jordan, Syria or Egypt, many after receiving death threats.

Professionals Fleeing Iraq As Violence, Threats Persist

Iraqi intellectuals flee 'death squads'

Loss of a functioning health care system. And loss of the public's health. Deadly infections including typhoid and tuberculosis are rampaging through the country. Iraq's network of hospitals and health centers, once admired throughout the Middle East, has been severely damaged by the war and looting.

Iraq Faces Health Crisis, Medical Group Reports
Iraq health care 'in deep crisis'

The UN's World Food Program reported that 400,000 Iraqi children were suffering from "dangerous deficiencies of protein". Deaths from malnutrition and preventable diseases, particularly amongst children, already a problem because of the 12 years of US-imposed sanctions, have increased as poverty and disorder have made access to a proper diet and medicines ever more difficult.

Humanitarian Consequences
of the War and Occupation of Iraq

Easily Dispensable: Iraq's Children

Depleted uranium particles, from exploded US ordnance, float in the Iraqi air, to be breathed into human bodies and to radiate forever, and infect the water, the soil, the blood, the genes, producing malformed babies. During the few weeks of war in spring 2003, A10 "tankbuster" planes, which use munitions containing depleted uranium, fired 300,000 rounds. Not only are Iraqi's being affected, this is having and will have very serious health effects for our soldiers.

About Depleted Uranium

SILENT WMDs EFFECTS OF DEPLETED URANIUM

Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium

DEPLETED URANIUM Education Project

The American military has attacked hospitals. Some have used this to say the purpose was to prevent them from giving out casualty figures of US attacks that contradicted official US figures, which the hospitals had been in the habit of doing. This only needs to happen once to ignite the flames and turn Iraqi opinion.

Field Health Clinic Bombed In Iraq

Numerous homes have been broken into by US forces, the men taken away, the women humiliated, the children traumatized; on many occasions, the family has said that the American soldiers helped themselves to some of the family's money. Iraq has had to submit to a degrading national strip search.

Iraq's Crisis of Scarred Psyches

Focus shifts to jail abuse of women

For Iraqi women, Abu Ghraib's taint

Iraq's legal system, outside of the political sphere, was once one of the most impressive and secular in the Middle East; it is now a shambles; religious law more and more prevails.

Iraq's Attorneys Practicing in a State of Fear

THE NEW IRAQ

Women's rights previously enjoyed are now in great and growing danger under harsh Islamic law, to one extent or another in various areas. There is today a Shiite religious ruling class in Iraq, which tolerates physical attacks on women for showing a bare arm or for picnicking with a male friend.

Some Fear Loss of Women's Rights in Iraq

Iraq: Draft Constitutions Signal Loss Of Rights

Unemployment is estimated to be around fifty percent, the range is 25-70% with no precise measurement.

Tackling Another Major Challenge in Iraq: Unemployment

IRAQ: Citizens chafe under rising unemployment

The cost of living has skyrocketed due to inflation. Income levels among many have not changed or dropped.

The supply of safe drinking water, effective sewage disposal, and reliable electricity are producing constant hardship for the public, in temperatures reaching 115 degrees. To add to the misery, people wait all day in the heat to purchase gasoline, due in part to oil production, the country's chief source of revenue, being less than half its previous level.

Security costs drain funds for water projects in Iraq

Civil war, death squads, kidnaping, car bombs, rape, each and every day ... Iraq has become the most dangerous place on earth. American soldiers and private security companies regularly kill people and leave the bodies lying in the street; US-trained Iraqi military and police forces kill as many as the insurgency. An entire new generation is growing up on violence and sectarian ethics; this will poison the Iraqi psyche for many years to come.

Ramadi: Mass Exodus Amid Rising Tensions

How many areas of Iraqi life which have improved as a result of the American actions? After all it's for the Iraqi people we are there right?

Are we not arguing the wrong thing? It's not really about ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ the war in Iraq. It is about the insane situation we have condemned our soldiers to suffer in this war. It is about bankrupting our country to build a nation that nobody will guarantee a continued alliance in the future. I really don't believe most people are aware of the enormity of the task and the immense cost to our nation.

But even beyond that, it matters little to the people of Iraq what you or I think. They face the realities of war's destructive powers and their perception of us is diminished each time an incident like the Haditha or Abu Ghraib scandal become public. They will care little if this new democracy brings constant fear, violence, and death. Despite our best efforts, negative consequences do occur. Their perception is their reality.

How many of the war cheerleaders remember when as a candidate for the presidency in 2000, George W. Bush insisted that, if elected, he would not allow U.S. military forces to engage in "nation building."?

Bush's pledge to avoid nation building came during a debate with Democrat Al Gore at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., on Oct. 11, 2000.

It was their second debate of the election campaign.
At that debate Bush recalled that the U.S. humanitarian mission in Somalia -- begun by his father, President George H.W. Bush -- had "changed into a nation-building mission, and that's where the mission went wrong."

"The mission was changed, and as a result, our nation paid a price," Bush continued. "And so I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building."

Bush declared that it was up to those who live in the liberated lands to rebuild them.

He added the Bush administration, if he was elected, would "absolutely not" indulge in nation planning. And so we launch another round of nation building in Iraq, even as the Bush administration struggles to rebuild a nation in Afghanistan.

Maybe he has forgotten, but Bush also pledged during the same debate to be "humble" in his foreign policy and not appear to be throwing our superpower weight around.

So dropping the rhetoric, do you think this is really worth it?

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"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." - Thomas Jefferson