Iraq: The Fourth Anniversary
This milestone was recorded in editorial pages around the world. At the Washington Post, editorial writers say "we were insufficiently skeptical of intelligence reports" and then dismiss intelligence "cherry-pick[ing]" as a reflection of Administration "belief" in "the catastrophically wrong case that then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented to the United Nations." [Nothing is written about the State Department's disagreement with those who insisted that Powell say what he said. No surprise, really, from a paper that has supported this invasion from day one.]
Contrast that with the op-ed at The Age, remembering that Australia is one of the US most stalwart allies and that The Age, like The Post, supported the war from day one:
March 20 is the fourth anniversary of the Iraq invasion ... is an occasion not to celebrate, but to lament. It was supposed to be brief, a five-stage plan: go in; topple regime; find Saddam Hussein's destructive weaponry; rehabilitate Iraq; leave. The first and second happened; the third was exposed as a bogus, discredited argument; the fourth can at best be described as work in progress; the fifth is not an option in the foreseeable future, at least according to US President George Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard (Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is the dissenting partner)...
All this proves beyond doubt the unwinnable, unresolvable and increasingly unacceptable nature of a conflict that over four years has riven Iraq, killed hundreds of thousands of its citizens, sent more than 3000 Americans home in body bags and put the Bush Administration at loggerheads with the swelling chorus of national and international opinion, calling for troop withdrawal. At the weekend, anti-war protesters in Washington and across Europe marched in their thousands. Can they all be wrong?...
We hope diplomacy can now succeed where military might has so obviously failed, but it can never resolve the terrible human cost of this ill-founded war. Four years is already four years too long.
More reading on the war and this anniversary from About.com writers:
- Timeline - Bush On Iraq - US Politics
- Both US and Iraq Citizens Give War A Thumbs-Down - US Politics
- Four Years Later: Looking Back at the Iraq-9/11 Myth - Terrorism
- Iraq War Enters Fifth Year - US Foreign Policy
- The Iraq War Four Years Later: Is It About Conquering, Not Helping, Iraq? - US Liberals
- Column on 3rd Anniversary of War Reveals How Little Has Changed One Year Later - Editor & Publisher
- Commit to getting done in Iraq and getting out - Detroit Daily News
- Debating What To Say - The Statesman Journal (Salem, OR)
- Democrats Should Set 2008 Iraq Deadline - Minneapolis Star-Tribune
- Ending The War And Beyond - The Berkeley (CA) Daily Planet
- Happy Anniversary, Iraq - Middle East Times
- Hard Lessons In Iraq - JoongAng Daily (South Korea)
- Iraq War: Four Years ... And Counting - Naples (FL) Daily News
- Iraq War: Still Wrong Course - Seattle Post-Intelligencier
- Iraq War Quadrennial - NY Times
- Iraq War Backers Must Admit Our Errors - LA Daily News
- It Was All Predictable - MSNBC HardBlogger
- Looking Back: Reasons for avoiding Iraq war clear four years ago - Houston Chronicle
- Oh, how tragic and deplorable the 4-year-old US-Iraq war is! - People's Daily Online
- On anniversary of war in Iraq, little changing the big picture - Appleton (WI) Post-Crescent
- Shocked and Awed - Arab News