Much has happened in the five years since President Bush flew aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in “Top Gun” style, stood under a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished” and proudly declared: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”
Five years ago, 139 American troops had died in Iraq. Now that number is 4,064. Five years ago, 542 American troops had been wounded in Iraq. Now that number is 29,395.
Five years ago, the national debt was $6.5 trillion. Now it’s $9.3 trillion. Five years ago, your average gallon of gas cost $1.44. Now it costs $3.57. Five years ago, Bush’s job-approval rating was at 70 percent. Now it’s at 28. Read the rest of this entry »
At a Hudson Institute event today, Iraq war architects Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith, as well as Dan Senor and Peter Rodman, reconvened to celebrate Feith?s new book, War and Decision, which tries to explain the failures of the Iraq war as just failures of other people.
Wolfowitz said Feith?s book is ?valuable? because it ?demolishes? the ?well-nurtured myths? about the Pentagon?s execution of the war. In his book, Feith claims the ?chief? mistake in Iraq was ?maintaining an occupation government for over a year.? Wolfowitz agreed, adding that the ?occupation? in fact ended in 2004:
The fact is, however, that we did end up with an occupation authority for a full nine months, and I?m afraid that the label occupation sticks to us even to this day, although the occupation ended in June of 2004. Doug considers that the biggest mistake we made.
