the obligatory look back

canvasing the blogs I read (see sidebar) it seems like some thoughts on the Iraq War are necessary since we have reached an artifical milestone-- 3 years of war. This is just as artifical and just as sad as the other milestone-- 1,000 dead. Now we are over 2,500 dead American soldiers and many more wounded.

A great way to sum up how badly things have gone in Iraq-- how divergent those outcomes have been from the rosy projections of hawks-- is Professor Juan Cole's Top Ten Catastrophes of the third year of the war. Not even top ten of the whole period...and that there are so many to choose from, that one can create a top ten.

The only good things that the Bush Administration did was topple Saddam and appoint this current Ambassador. The trial has been a mess, the security never existed, the country is in civil war, terrorist have the perfect training ground to attack our troops, etc.

Like most Americans, I tire of reading about another bombing in some market somewhere, or a checkpoint bombing, or a mass grave found, or a car full of executed men found. Likewise, I tire of the "things getting better, says Bush" articles and stories on the TV. I tend to just skim the headlines, because if I were to know more, I would be more and more angry and depressed.

Occationally, I think about what would have happened to our world in the last 6 years had Gore won the recount. Saddam might still be in power, but most of those 2,500 soldiers would be alive (and 10,000s of Iraqis). Bin Laden would probabbly have been caught (as more resources would have been directed towards finding him instead of WMD's in Iraq and prepping for the other war). Our air and water would be cleaner, the courts would be filled with moderates rather than extremists. There would have been mass evacuations of the lower 9th ward and many lives would have been saved (Gore himself rented a chopper to save people with his own money and asked for no press) Plan B would have been available over the counter for years now. The Abramoff , Enron, Worldcomm and so many other scandals would have been agressively pursued from the get-go. Global Warming would be a State of the Union issue, and real measures would be made for citizens to curb consumption (Conservative Pundits would compare Gore to Carter). The congress would have tried everything to stop Gore, only to lose Jeffords in 2001 and then the majority in the Senate in 2002. The house would have fallen later, once all the bribery and lobbying scandals became to the fore.

Instead, Gore is a CEO of a TV station and on the board of companies like Apple. And Bush is at 33% and striving to run the country further aground. I wonder if O'Connor regrets her vote.