Can I vote?

Sure. . . why not?
You live in the US, but are not a citizen, correct?

So the amount of support may or may not change based on who's dropping the bombs?

Correct.

I voted 'No', for the record. I still think that it was a mistake to rush into that war to begin with, but now we have there is no immediate way to exfiltrate the troops without causing a power vacuum. This would probably lead to hardline Shias gaining the upper hand (with Iranian approval) and the Sunnis and Kurds being stuffed in the ensuing civil war, And that's probably one of the better case scenarios.

Now I do have to say that I would be more trusting of some the US actions taken in Iraq. I find it troublesome that immediately after the war, the US secured the oil ministry but not the ammo dumps, just as I find it troublesome that US taxpayers are paying nearly $1000 per section of concrete blastwall to fortify the green zone. I have a problem believing that segregating the plush palace and hotel areas from the rest of Baghdad is beneficial to begin with, but if it absolutely has to be done, why aren't we buying the blastwall from Iraqi companies for $100 or so that it would cost to produce there. rather than paying through the nose to import them from America? Iraq used to be a major concrete producer.

I find it troublesome that immediately after the war...

Are you suggesting that the war is now over?

tanstaafl.

Good point! Insert "declared" in the appropiate position.

So here's my question (mostly for US this time): What is the difference between Kerry and Bush as far as Iraq goes? It seems they spent a great deal of time "debating Iraq", but the only thing I heard Kerry say he'd do differently is get support from other countries the way Bush is not. From what I understand (not just based on this limited pole), for the most part foreigners aren't going to be that much more supportive of Kerry than they are of Bush, making Kerry's stance kind of empty.

Now certainly there are TONS of differences between the way they want to handle things here at home, but it seems to me there's not much to debate over as far as Iraq goes. I'm not using this as a pro-Bush argument, just an observation that Kerry hasn't done a very good job of differentiating himself from Bush on this point (though that's probably an impossible task given the state of things- we don't have too many choices at this point).

He's certainly a politician through and through, but I believe that he will actually consider things as opposed to jumping to conclusions as Bush seems to do. In fact, in some respects, bending to the wishes of your consituents is a positive thing. It all depends on how much you bend. During this season, though, I think it's more about presentation than actual intent, and he's trying to get as many votes as possible. Notice how he always talks about "killing" the terrorists, hardly ever "capturing". That's very pandering, IMO, especially since the people that would offend (like me) aren't going to vote for Bush no matter what, so it's only going to potentially affect the votes on the Bush side.

Well, perhaps you would have voted for Kerry, perhaps not, but you're not voting for Bush, and if you vote for someone else, you might as well simply not bother going to the polls. It's certainly not a win for Kerry, but it's not much of a loss, either.

Insofar as the outcome of this election.