many of us on the left, especially those who had experience dealing with arabs and muslims, knew that the artificially created "country" of Iraq was a foolish contrivance of ignorant western european christians in the wake of WWI who had no idea about the incredible enmity that had existed for a millennium between sunni and shiite muslims and kurds. Iraqis have no inherent deep seated identity as Iraqis, but as sunnis or shiites or kurds foremost. They will always be at each other's throats and we could accomplish any long term peaceful "resolution" - and I use that term in its loosest form - were we to partition the land into three different countries. In absence of outside "peacekeepers" keeping a lid on sectarian violence by force of arms, the muslim sects forced to coexist in "Iraq" will forever be slaughtering one another.
And if Bush had surrounded himself with real middle eastern experts instead of neocon buffoons, he would have known that.