Mission Accomplished?

On May 1, 2003, President Bush landed on the deck of the carrier U.S.S. Lincoln to proudly proclaim that all major combat operations in Iraq had been completed. "Mission Accomplished" read the huge White House-prepared banner behind him. As of that day, 140 U.S. soldiers had been killed in Iraq. The search for WMDs had not yet begun.



On the third anniversary of the Iraq war, the death toll is now 2,318. The number of WMDs uncovered in Iraq remains zero.

So far, the only positive development in Iraq has been for Halliburton shareholders, who have seen their company rake in more than $10 billion in government contracts.

When it became clear -- not only from U.N. weapons inspectors but from the president's own chief arms investigator David Kay -- that Saddam Hussein possessed no WMDs, the rationale for the war shifted to capturing Saddam Hussein and forcing democracy on Iraq. Many Americans accepted this as a suitable booby prize for the president's failure to capture Osama bin Laden -- who, unlike Hussein, did attack the United States.

As the years dragged on, however, Americans have became increasingly disenchanted with the Iraq quagmire and Bush's approval rating steadily slid from 69% to 29%.

Fewer Americans than ever before think the war is worth the cost in lives and dollars; more are eager to see U.S. troops come home. Unfortunately, one of the few who believes the opposite is George W. Bush. But that's not surprising, considering Bush won't even refer to his major blunder as a war.

WASHINGTON Mar 19, 2006 (AP)— President Bush marked the anniversary of the Iraq war Sunday by touting the efforts to build democracy there and avoiding any mention of the daily violence that rages three years after he ordered an invasion.

The president didn't utter the word "war."