I saw on a show recently that somebody broke down and said that Iran was actually the main target on the initial war on terror. We decided to take afghanistan first (because it had the least stable government of the three) to have atleast one side of iran locked down. When the afghanistan mission ended with almost no casualties and in record pace, the people in charge (president, congreess, whoever) decided to move on Iraq because saddam would have needed to be taken out eventually anyway and they expected the same rapid success. They did not receive the same success and failed to come up with a back up plan incase the iraq occupation effort failed. Thats why we are where we're at now.