Friday marks the three-year anniversary of President George W. Bush's delivery of an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein.
The president gave the Iraqi leader 48 hours to leave the country or face attack.
Three days later, Operation Iraqi Freedom began, and less than a month and a half later, the president declared an end to major combat operations while speaking under a giant banner that read "Mission Accomplished."
He was wrong, of course, but few at the time could actually guess how wrong he was. Here we are, three years later, and the situation in Iraq has not improved - instead, it's deteriorating rapidly by the hour.
Tuesday, news media announced that in the previous 30 hours at least 86 bodies had been discovered in Baghdad as the result of sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites. Many of the corpses showed evidence of torture and execution-style deaths. In the past few weeks, thousands of Iraqis - as well as 22 American soldiers - have been killed in violence which many believe will lead to - or already is - a civil war.
While Bush is blindly telling the nation that "freedom is on the march," and we must "stay the course," Iraqis are slaughtering Iraqis by the hundreds in a bloodthirsty scramble for power and revenge.
Look at what this war has cost us: more than 2,300 American servicemen and servicewomen have perished, including more than 130 in this short year alone.
After every episode of PBS's "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer," the broadcast ends with a solemn tribute to the fallen by showing a photograph and biographical notes of each killed soldier as the information is released by the Pentagon. What you see is a seemingly endless parade of young men and women, no older than you and I - I'm talking about soldiers who are often only 18, 19 or 20 years old being robbed of life as a result of the misguided foreign policy of elected officials who rule in safety thousands of miles away from the battle.
And it is not just the sheer number of dead that bothers me. Each one of those thousands of soldiers was a son or daughter to loving parents, perhaps an older brother or younger sister to a sibling. Some were parents themselves, and now their children must grow up without them.
A recent report noted that 90 percent of those wounded in Iraq survive. This means there are roughly 23,000 surviving wounded as a result of this war, many of whom are amputees, disfigured or have other physical ailments. In addition, it is estimated that almost one-third of all veterans will require long-term treatment for psychological problems related to the war.
The toll of the battle is just too high.
The American public is becoming increasingly pessimistic about this conflict. According to a CBS News Poll, only 15 percent of U.S. citizens think we are very likely to succeed in Iraq, and 54 percent think Iraq will never become a stable democracy. In addition, 71 percent of Americans think Iraq is currently in civil war.
The question now becomes: How much longer will the president and Congress be able to force-feed the public scripted lines about "staying the course" as more and more realize we are on a course of destruction?
I think it's time to bring them home.
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