Contrary to popular belief, I do not revel in failure in Iraq. I decided to stop repeatedly writing article blips about death tolls because I realize that there will be deaths no matter what. If they hit a record, I may note that only in that when a death toll record is set in 2007 that means that progress from 2003 is sorely lagging behind. That said, it’s unfair to make a note every time a bomb goes off and a few does Iraqis and a handful of soldiers die.

Stories of massive import, such as irrefutable evidence that a lie was made to fool the country or the failure at Walter Reed (though I missed the latter story) naturally warrant writing however. Largely symbolic stories as well, such as this: the man who brought down the statue of Saddam Hussein, saying the occupation is worse than life under Saddam.

He explained: “There were lots of people from my tribe who were also put in prison or hanged. It became my dream ever since I saw them building that statue to one day topple it.”

Yet he now says he would prefer to be living under Saddam than under US occupation. He said: “The devil you know [is] better than the devil you don’t. We no longer know friend from foe. The situation is becoming more dangerous. It’s not getting better at all. People are poor and the prices are going higher and higher.”

Saddam, he says, “was like Stalin. But the occupation is proving to be worse”

I got nothin’ to add to that.

Sometimes I get the feeling that Bush literally does not have a connection to the world around him. I don’t mean this in any kind of partisan bitterness or that I’m simply assuming the worst. It just seems like when he speaks, he does so with absolutely no consideration for what’s going on or what he’s said before.

Take his recent speech on progress in Iraq. As you’re reading this, take into consideration what makes this speech any different from the others we’ve heard over the past few years, and add in just general thoughts of what’s happened since the Iraqi invasion. Let’s kick things off:

Four years ago today coalition forces launched Operation Iraqi Freedom to remove Saddam Hussein from power. They did so to eliminate the threat his regime posed to the Middle East and to the world.

I am willing to bet we will never hear Bush mentioning WMDs when he talks about Iraq again. It’s patently false enough that Iraq posed a significant threat to even the Middle East, let alone the world, but notice that he says the mission was the removal of Saddam Hussein. The fact that the nation was repeatedly told of weapons of mass destruction and that invasion was simply based on that has gone away. Moving on…

So with our help, Iraq’s government is carrying out an aggressive plan to secure Baghdad. And we’re continuing to train the Iraqi security forces so that they ultimately take full responsibility for the security of their own people.

…

Prime Minister Maliki and General Petraeus emphasized that the Baghdad security plan is still in its early stages and success will take months, not days or weeks.

These are things we should have had years ago. It seems to suggest that between May of 2003 and now there hasn’t been an aggressive plan to secure Baghdad. March of 2007 simply should not be the time when we’re hearing about a plan to secure Baghdad in its “early stages”. We’re nearing up on four years after Saddam was taken out of power, and this speech could have come in March of 2004 and sounded perfectly applicable, the progress since then is lacking, to say the least.

My heart goes out the most to our soldiers. They’re being sent into this mess with inadequate equipment, an undefined goal, and hollow words for support from Washington. Yes yes, we all support the troops and we all want them to win the war and come home safely. Unfortunately, Bush has systematically refused to do what’s necessary to at least complete his mission and as a result he’s doing nothing to ensure they’ll come home safely.