Sorry to keep this line going, but I believe evildrclam has been hoodwinked a little by spin. From what I could tell, Saddam Hussein had pretty much finished with his campaign of intimidation within his country. The remaining people were sufficiently deterred from making trouble that few needed to continue being tortured. Those who could leave were desperately trying to. He was "drip feeding" the remainder of the population just enough that the infant mortality and other non-violent deaths were not that bad, and he would have continued in that vein indefinitely had there been no war. The real damage - ie. to the underlying infrastructure, economy, etc. was already done. The previous wars were far more terrible than this one. This one, however, has the chance of guaranteeing future improvements. In my opinion, the real advantage in having such a huge US army there is that it's in the right place for various geopolitical projects which will have benefits for the region and the rest of the world. Having more people on the ground (which are incidentally, almost useless as policemen)would just mean more targets for the terrorists. You imply that more people on the ground from varied countries would have helped. I'm saying that all people that have entered Iraq that aren't native, are targets in one way or another. Less is more, I believe in this case.