Bush's mess grows in Iraq

ANN MCFEATTERS
GUEST COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON -- We were rudely reminded the other day that President Bush is still in office.

While we were worrying about Barack Obama's relationship with his strange preacher, Hillary Rodham Clinton's strange misremembering about being under sniper fire in the Balkans when she clearly was not, and whether John McCain wants to bomb Iran, Bush was trying to figure out how to mark -- celebrate? -- the five-year anniversary of the Iraq War.

He went to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, the state that gave him the margin of victory in 2004, and said it is hard to believe that it was "only five years ago" that the United States toppled Saddam Hussein. World War II ended sooner than that.

As economists debate whether the war will cost one, two or three trillion dollars, the 4,000 U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq have not died in vain, he insisted.

The reason they have not, and the reason why more Americans will die, is to show the world that freedom can flourish in Iraq, he said, although the level of democracy in Iraq is highly debatable.

Even as Bush was speaking of the great progress in Iraq, U.S. diplomats were told to take cover in Baghdad and not to leave reinforced structures because of insurgent rocket and mortar fire. A curfew was set for the coming weekend...[Open in new window]