great post JR
just like to point out as far as vietnam, we won militarily... it was a war where we weren't allowed to take out supply trails, weren't allowed to stop border crossings, weren't willing to fight (draftees forced to fight), etc...
When we went in i really thought it was rushed because bush had a vendetta against saddam (who tried to kill his father)... but i really believe he wanted to get rid of saddam for because of some moral sense of righteousness than any nefarious intents...
unlike korea, saddam had killed massive amounts of its own civillian population (with a potential WoMD (chemical gas), had invaded foreign countries, and had tried to kill foreign leaders... there were places in iraq that terrorist camps could exist, they (at one point) had a very very large military for the population and a massive system of secret police and toture, and had continued to buy military gear and support against sanctions... human rights and sanctions violations aside, they did possess a legitimate military threat to all neighboring countries...
they problem we have now is that rebuilding an occupied country is hard, especially without the support of the local population (and besides japan and the phillipines (both supportive populations), our track record is BAD)... and if we pull out now, there's a huge chance of anarchy followed by either another tyrant or a militant islamic state, both vitriolic in their hatred of the US... (ie, will have gone from bad to worse)... its not like we can just pull out and pretend it never happened.