Future of America found within

Five years, 4000 American lives, many thousands of Iraqi lives, half a trillion dollars and a still-smashed country later, the US military tells us:



At risk of boring you, let's sum up.

- No weapons of mass destruction
- No involvement in 9/11
- No links to al Qaeda
- No region-wide flowering of democracy
- No lessening of the influence of radical movements

The Iraq War represents nothing less than a colossal, criminal failure of policy and morality, a completely indelible stain on American history. Period. Can anyone suggest a single positive outcome of this adventure?

And no, having a gang of Shiite thugs hang Saddam while taunting him does not count. Yes, we ejected Saddam from power, which is in a vacuum not a bad thing. But there is not yet any evidence whatsoever that we have replaced his regime with a superior alternative. In fact, all signs point to a monumentally corrupt fundamentalist Shiite-dominated coalition that is currently being held together with a steady supply of bribes to various Sunni warlords. So deposing Saddam is not yet a positive outcome, because Iraq is not yet better off.

And yet John McCain can point to his support for the war as an asset, not a liability in his campaign. George W. Bush can claim the credibility to decree that the United States should be allowed to torture people, and that claim goes largely unchallenged. (Although torture clearly didn't help us get accurate intelligence on Iraq.) The talking heads on TV can discuss the crippled US economy as though $275 million every day isn't being siphoned into the abyss of Iraq.

In case anyone still cares.