Iraq War Anniversary

The woman stammered. She obviously knew she was still on the air and had to maintain her composure. But it was clear to anyone's ear that she was having a difficult time. Her voice clouded with emotion as she struggled to tell the talk show host and his audience of...

Now that we got rid of our first man in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein, for good, why not make room for another? John McCain made an unannounced appearance in the Iraqi capital last Sunday with no word of when troops will be making their disappearance. Instead, the likely Republican presidential nominee...

On the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, I did a series of conversations to find out how both critics and supporters of the war effort see the current situation. Some of the critical voices I listened to are Les Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations,...

Watching the troubles of the economy, some observers don't want a bailout for either Wall St. or stressed homeowners who find themselves in over their heads. The phrase "moral hazard" is being tossed around as shorthand for "You took the risk, now take your lumps." It would seem that the...

Last week marked the 5th anniversary of the Untied States' invasion and occupation of the sovereign nation of Iraq.

Five years ago, according to Gallup polling, 75% of the country thought we were doing the right thing. That number has diminished to 39% in its most recent poll.

We know the numbers -- 1 trillion dollars, 5 years, 775 detainees in Guantanamo, 935 false statements made by the administration, about 4,000 dead Americans, 30-50,000 wounded soldiers, over 100,000 soldiers with treated and untreated PTSD, almost a million dead Iraqis, 2 million internally displaced Iraqis and up to...

Talk about a reality disconnect: making a 5th war anniversary visit to Iraq, Dick Cheney called the surge a "major success." Also in Iraq, John McCain - in between repeatedly asserting a nonexistent connection between al-Qaeda and Iran - crowed, "the surge is working." Meanwhile, in Baghdad, a highly touted...

Five years. Nearly four thousand American lives. Perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead. Half a trillion dollars spent and we're still rolling up the tab.

How do you mark the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq? President Bush and Vice-President Cheney were a contrast in styles.

Had leading Democrats taken the trouble to fashion thoughtful and reasonable national security principles in the post-Vietnam era and thereby regained the confidence of the American people in their ability to protect the country, quite possibly they would have felt comfortable opposing the invasion of Iraq. Instead, they permitted the...

In his post earlier this week on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Tom Hayden quotes a line from a 2004 Foreign Affairs article by Lee Feinstein and me radically out of context and infers from it a position that neither Lee nor I hold. The line...

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Iraq invasion and occupation has been the administration's -- and mainly the president's -- predictably awful and irresponsible habit of placing the burden of the success or failure of this thing squarely on the shoulders of an already overburdened military. Specifically, President...

As the war in Iraq enters its sixth year, official US casualty figures approach 4,000 dead and nearly 30,000 wounded. These figures exclude the many who have less visible but no less damaging injuries to mental health; those whose injuries resulted from accidents while they served in a war zone;...

Much of our understanding of Iraq, five years on, is gotten in drive-by glimpses. John McCain swoons into Baghdad for a 48-hour stopover full of photo-ops. American personnel dart out of the Green Zone for quickie missions, rarely sharing tea with the people they are paid to protect. The evening...

This marks the five-year anniversary of the war in Iraq. Usually, I'm against the media playing up these kinds of things. After all, the five-year date is no different than the day before in Iraq, or the day after in Iraq. Troops are still under attack, some die, some are...