Two Months

Last week, days before the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a group of us met with Hans Blix, the former top UN weapons inspector. He reminded us that not only did the UN have hundreds of weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq before the invasion, but that he had ready access to all of the Iraqi sites which US intel had targeted for inspection. He reminded us that weapons inspectors had already checked out some of the locations which Colin Powell would later refer to in his UN Security Council testimony, and had found no evidence of WMD. And he reminded us that, while weapons inspectors were not yet ready to stipulate whether or not Iraq still had WMD at the time of the invasion, he believed that another two months would have allowed them to make that determination.

Instead of giving the weapons inspectors another two months to better determine whether the rationale for the invasion made sense, President Bush launched the invasion.

Four years, hundreds of billions of dollars, and tens of thousands of dead and wounded later - with the Middle East less stable and America less secure - the invasion and subsequent occupation have proven to be a colossal foreign policy blunder for our country, with no end in sight.

There were better alternatives to a precipitous invasion then, and there are better alternatives to our ongoing occupation now.