After 5 years, a broken military, broken Constitution, broken laws and broken troops
By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
McClatchy Newspapers
Wars are deceptively easy to get into, but harder than calculus to get out of, especially when things aren't going well.
President Bush is learning the truth of that the hard way this week as his war in Iraq enters its fifth year. Starting five years with $400 billion already spent foolishly, 3,200 soldiers and Marines killed, more than 50,000 wounded or injured and nothing in sight but more of the same.
Remember the fall of 2002 and the beginning of 2003? How fast and easy a cakewalk it would be? How Iraq oil revenues would pay most of the cost? How our troops would mostly be greeted as liberators with flowers and chocolates? How toppling Saddam Hussein's dictatorship would trigger a democratic wave that would sweep the Middle East?
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and, sadly, the then-Secretary of State Colin Powell all declared that invading Iraq was vital to our national security and national interests.
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