Five years

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the launch of BushCo’s folly in Iraq. Five years later, at least 3,990 American service members are dead, tens of thousands critically wounded and untold hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. And, five years later, there’s still no end in sight. Chaos and violence are rampant, the invasion has given rise to al Qaida in Iraq, a previously nonexistent terror group, while political progress in Iraq is, at best, insufficient.

Five years later, longer than American involvement in every war except Vietnam and the Revolutionary War, George Bush and Dick Cheney still look at the steaming shitpile they’ve cooked up and see caviar.

Bush will give a rah rah speech at the Pentagon today that’s fitting for a former cheerleader. But his prepared comments include one interesting sentence:

"We have learned through hard experience what happens when we pull our forces back too fast — the terrorists and extremists step in, fill the vacuum, establish safe havens and use them to spread chaos and carnage."

If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was talking about Afghanistan (which is about as fucked up as Iraq and approaching its seventh anniversary of our military involvement). That’s where Bush had Osama bin Laden (remember him?) on the run but let him get away by focusing on plans to disarm a dictator who, as it turns out, didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, just as UN weapons inspectors said.

But Bush couldn’t possibly be talking about that, because that would be admitting a mistake and Bush doesn’t make mistakes. Which explains why he has laid the groundwork for keeping his proud legacy secret.