Iraq War Enters Its Sixth Year

As we started the Iraq War, Bush and Cheney told us our soldiers would be greeted as liberators, and Rumsfeld said the war wouldn't last six months. Either these are the most incompetent fools ever, or they were lying to us. Probably both.

We are now entering the sixth year of the war, and there is still no end in sight. In comparison, our involvement in all of World War II was less than four years (December 7,1941 through August 15, 1945).

Around the first of the year, Bush and Cheney celebrated because only 24 United States soldiers had been killed in December. They crowed that we had turned the corner and the surge was working. Once again, they were either incompetent or lying.

In the two-and-a-half months since then, another 89 U.S. soldiers have been killed, bringing the total to 3,992 (with about 29,314 wounded). Since the first of the year, over 1,700 Iraqis have been killed. No one knows the total of Iraqis, but it is at least in the hundreds of thousands if not more.

And while thousands continue to die there, nothing has been accomplished politically -- unless you count the installation of a puppet government that can't even agree on a flag, let alone accomplish anything important.

That's because they're in the middle of a civil war. Nothing will be accomplished until they settle it. And they can't settle it as long as we keep our troops in the middle of it.

Most Americans don't want our troops to stay there, and most Iraqis would like for us to get out immediately. It's time to bring our troops home and let the Iraqis settle their problems, because we cannot do it for them.

Bring our troops home. All of them. Now.