One Weekend a Month...or 5 and a Half Years...or More

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So, I wonder what Michael Ledeen thinks of his shitty little doctrine now?

President Bush said Tuesday that American forces will remain in Iraq for years and it will be up to a future president to decide when to bring them all home.

Link. H/T to Think Progress.

I wonder if the American public would've been so ready to send soldiers headlong into a miserable high-desert climate--searing summers, bone chilling winters, dust storms wreaking havok on bodies and equipment--if Smirk-Chimp had told them the truth...instead of "Weapons of Mass Destruction," "Mission Accomplished," and the artfully callous "Bring 'em on."

Oh--and Attaturk came across this re: WMD. Check it out.

Anyway, could you picture Smirk Chimp at the March 6, 2003 press conference speaking candidly and frankly about the cost in lives, money, international reputation--in exchange for a quagmire, followed by a civil war, followed by (most likely) some form of reactionary Islamic theocracy? Nah, I can't either...

No, it's was lies, bullshit, lies AND bullshit, lies, bullshit, terror color codes...and Dick Cheney...and swiftboating...and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita (YRHT notes the dauphin graciously offered assistance to Australia in the aftermath of a Cat 5 cyclone...how nice), and eventually, the conclusion--with a whimper--of Shrub, James Buchanan redux (actually, I saw recently, forget where, that the boy is a descendent of Franklin Pierce, via Babs, Barbara Pierce Bush. As the commentor noted, the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree).

For more on the fine mess Gee Dubya got us into, check out Patrick Cockburn's latest--and Riverbend's...and I'll agree with James Wolcott's suggestion re: how to "celebrate" the anniversary of Operation Worse Than the Neighbor's Garage:

Meanwhile, those merry souls at Fox News Your World w/ Neil Cavuto opened the show today with a segment asking if the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq should be celebrated as a national holiday there.

Of course, it's difficult to know how the people of Baghdad would be able to get out and celebrate their liberation when shopping for summer clothes presents mortal peril.

And yet I don't think this is a bad idea. Perhaps next year on the anniversary of this glorious mission, the US could fly a transport plane crammed with the creme de la creme of warbloggers, hawkish pundits, neoconservative thinkers, and cable news and talk radio hosts, and deposit them on the site of Saddam Hussein's fallen statue--the newly christened Krauthammer Square--and let them behold the joy and splendor they have bestowed upon a grateful Iraqi people. Who, in turn, will brave the heat, dust, and danger and leave their homes to demonstrate their gratitude to their noble guests by attempting to shoot their lying asses to pieces.

No, that probably won't make for an appropriate holiday. Scratch that idea.

To earn its rightful date on the calendar, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq should be a day of remembrance on which conscientious Americans wear mourning colors and beg the world's forgiveness, and Iraqis' forgiveness most of all.