Five years ago a war started.

Here is a good recap.

This misses the point:

Officials now running the U.S. effort express frustration that the gains wrought by their new political, security and economic policies -- in particular, sharply reduced violence -- are continually weighed against the first four years of the war, when Iraq unraveled in insurgency and sectarian strife.

"I came to Washington to describe what we're doing," Charles P. Ries, Crocker's senior deputy in charge of reconstruction and the Iraqi economy, said during a visit last week. "At almost every meeting, somebody wants me to describe what we used to do. . . . I know why people raise these questions, but I don't feel it's something I can speak to. The times were different then."

I think the questions about pre-"Surge" policy are perfectly legitimate because, while the current emphasis seems to be on tactical fuck-ups, but there are some under-the-radar issues at hand:

1. I am sorry to say it (I'm not), there were no weapons of mass destruction. There were none. This was rationale number one for going to war, and it was completely false. Any attempt at accountability on this matter died in 2004, and the fact that the reason that we went to war wasn't really a reason at all has been brushed aside as axiomatic and irrelevant.

2. The following people are total assclowns:

L. Paul Bremer

Colin Powell (take-backs don't count)

Richard Perle

Donald Rumsfeld

Richard Cheney

Paul Wolfowitz

George W. Bush

3. One of these is not like the others:

July 18, 2006- Daily Toll Above 100

August 3, 2006-Warning of Civil War

August 16, 2006-Bomb Attacks on G.I.'s Increase

September 7, 2006-The Senate votes 98-0 to appropriate 63 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan making the total thus far 469.7 billion dollars.

Supporters of this sort of crap would argue that increased violence requires increased money. I say it reflects a lack of oversight of the executive branch by the legislative.

4.Which brings me to the obvious larger constitutional issues at hand. Congress has the power to "declare war" under Article One Section 8 of the Constitution, and gave only plain statutory authorization in this case. I don't even feel like getting into the reasons and problems with this but basically it makes it easier to go to war because it gives broader authorization for the president, and sounds less serious ("authorization of the use of force" vs. "declaration of war") and is therefore easier to get the congress and the populous to sign on to. The Supreme Court has refused to take a case on this issue and I'd kind of prefer that this court not go near it.

5. More than five years ago I walked out of geometry with Ms. Whelan to walk down to the State House to protest this god damn mess and we were so loud the state senate had to shut their windows. And it gets hot in the state senate. I don't know what today's protests are achieving beyond disruptive symbolism. Were I to protest today, I wouldn't know what to protest. I don't even know what to write. I honestly have a hard time understanding why it wasn't completely obvious to everybody that this was an awful idea and too many people have been hurt or killed and too much money was diverted from perfectly good things and frankly too many words have been wasted trying to explain this to people who have yet to understand this.