4,000

AP via MSNBC: BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers in Baghdad on Sunday,
the military said, pushing the overall American death toll in the five-year war to at least 4,000.

The grim milestone came on the same day that rockets and mortars pounded the U.S.-protected Green Zone,
underscoring the fragile security situation and the resilience of both Sunni and Shiite extremist groups
despite an overall lull in violence.

There is nothing I can personally add to this. This nightmare just won't stop. Almost as amazing as the nightmare is the stubbornness of everyone who got us here.

2002 circa: "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties." - President Bush

2002 March xx: "Fuck Saddam, we're taking him out." - President Bush

2002 September 7: "From a marketing point of view, you don't roll out new products in August." - Andrew Card

2002 September 8: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." - NSA Adviser Rice

2002 December 21: "It's a slam-dunk case!" - CIA Director Tenet

2003 January 29: "British intelligence has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." - President Bush, State of the Union Speech

2003 February 5: "Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts, corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries." - Secretary of State Powell

2003 February 27: "It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army. Hard to imagine." - Paul Wolfowitz

2003 March 16: "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." - Vice President Cheney

2003 March 16: "We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." - Vice President Cheney

2003 March 30: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." - Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld

2003 April 11: "Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." - Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld

2003 May 2: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." - President Bush

2003 May 28: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason." - Paul Wolfowitz

2003 May 29: "We found the weapons of mass destruction." - President Bush

2003 June 20: "I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." - Vice President Cheney

2003 June 24: "I don't know anybody that I can think of who has contended that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons." - Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld

2003 July 2: "My answer is bring 'em on." - President Bush

2003 July 9: "I think the burden is on those people who think he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are." - Ari Fleisher

2003 November 7: "In Iraq, a ruthless dictator cultivated weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. He gave support to terrorists, had an established relationship with al Qaeda, and his regime is no more." - Vice President Cheney

2004 January 20: "Already, the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations." - President Bush, State of the Union Speech

2004 March 25: (Joking) "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere!" - President Bush

2004 August xx: "Had we to do it over again, we would look at the consequences of catastrophic success, being so successful so fast that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escaped and lived to fight another day." - President Bush

2004 December 8: "As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time." - Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld

2005 January 30: "This is a historic moment for Iraq, a day when Iraqis can hold their heads high because they are challenging the terrorists and starting to write their future with their own hands." - Iraqi PM Allawi

2005 February 16: "I am not going to give you a number for it because it's not my business to do intelligent work." - Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld

2006 March 19: "We are losing each day on average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is." - Former Iraqi PM Allawi

2006 October 25: "It's my responsibility to provide the American people with a candid assessment on the way forward ... Absolutely, we're winning." - President Bush

2006 December 20: "We're not winning, we're not losing." - President Bush

2007 December 5: "I believe that the goal of a secure, stable and democratic Iraq is within reach." - Secretary of Defense Gates

(sources: 1, 2)

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Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002
Passed House of Representatives: October 10, 2002 (296 - 133, 3 no vote)
Passed Senate: October 11, 2002 (77 - 23)
Signed into Law: October 16, 2002

CNN: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said she is not sorry she voted for a resolution authorizing President Bush to take military action in Iraq despite the recent problems there but she does regret "the way the president used the authority." - Presidential Candidate Senator Hillary Clinton

NBC News via Huffington Post: "We can have this Jesuitical argument about what exactly was meant. But when Chuck Hagel, who helped to draft the resolution said, 'It was not a vote for war,' What I was told directly by the White House in response to my question, 'If you are given this authority, will you put the inspectors in and permit them to finish their job,' I was told that's exactly what we intended to do." - Presidential Candidate Senator Hillary Clinton

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(Well maybe I do have a little to say.)

Those who do not learn from the past, in addition to being doomed to repeat it, are also impressively stupid. There are 4,000 reasons why I won't vote for Senator Clinton, 4,000 reasons I will not vote for McCain, 4,000 reasons I will not vote for anyone who thought Iraq was a good idea - and there will be a few hundred more before election day 2008.

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Now frontiers shift like desert sands, while nations wash their bloodied hands of loyalty, of history, in shades of gray.