“We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”
- George Bernard Shaw

The night of March 19, 2003, U.S. forces received reports that Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein was visiting his sons, Uday and Qusay Hussein, at Dora Farms, within the al-Dora farming community on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Four satellite-guided, 2,000-pound “Bunker Busters” and 40 missiles were dropped on the compound. Saddam was not present, nor were any Iraqi leadership or Hussein family members. The attack resulted in the deaths of 15 civilians.

That evening marked the beginning of a military invasion of Iraq which President George W. Bush said was “to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people.”

Five years later, there is no doubt that the Iraq misadventure was the work of contemptible and clueless men, and that the end is nowhere in sight.

Seemingly willful ignorance of Iraqi and Islamic realities on the part of Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld were aided by Congress, which did not heed the undeniable fact that presidents can lie (up to 935 times, in fact).

Of course, all of us bear some measure of complicity.

An overwhelming number of voters dislike preemptive wars, and now want the troops out of Iraq, but don’t know what the best exit strategy would be.

The result is apathy, which is a critical step in allowing a nation to have the wool pulled over its collective eyes, year after year, by manipulative hacks.

How many more deaths and trillions of dollars wasted in Iraq will it take for the public to say enough? With such opposition, how does this go on?

Most Iraq-Vietnam comparisons are too sweeping and broad, but here in 2008, the state of political discourse has devolved to early 1970s levels.

Upon suspending his White House bid, Mitt Romney made an unbelievable statement that he was dropping out GOP race to benefit us all:

“In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,” the former Massachusetts Governor said.

This crap is what we’ve boiled down to. Keep fighting a meaningless war waged on hubris and false pretenses or else … you’re a terrorist!

Putting a stop to such bastardized attitudes will be an uphill climb, but unless we wish to resign ourselves to 100 years more of the same, it is our duty.

We can start by electing Barack Obama President of the United States, but we must also do more to express our dissatisfaction with the war on local levels.

Elected officials in all capacities need to know, in no uncertain terms, that we want this unmitigated disaster over with. The sooner the occupation ends, the sooner we can move forward and repair this country, both domestically and abroad.

The White House defended Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday from criticism from Republican Sen. John McCain that he was one of the worst U.S. defense secretaries ever for his handling of the Iraq war.

McCain, one of President George W. Bush’s key allies in the U.S. Congress on Iraq, is running for his party’s nomination to be president in 2008.

“I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history,” the Arizona senator and Vietnam War veteran said on the campaign trail in South Carolina on Monday.

The White House, caught between a rock and a hard place, backed Rumsfeld but was careful not to criticize McCain in doing so.

“We think Donald Rumsfeld was an enormously consequential and effective secretary of defense and somebody who led to the transformation of the
Department of Defense. Senator McCain holds a different point of view,” said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

Rumsfeld, the second-longest serving defense secretary, was widely blamed for the U.S. failure to bring stability to the Middle East amid growing public discontent over the administration’s Iraq war policy.

A day after Republicans lost control of Congress in elections last November due largely to concern about Iraq, Bush accepted Rumsfeld’s resignation and replaced him with Robert Gates.

George W. Bush needs McCain’s support in his efforts to secure $100 billion in new funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Asked if McCain’s comments should be chalked up to his jockeying for position in the 2008 election, Snow quipped: “I left the chalk at home.”

December is usually a quiet time for politics.

Congress adjourns, the President is forced to eat crow (in the case of this year, at least), and very little of consequence happens. But this year is ending with a blast of news, starting with the health of Sen. Tim Johnson and the impending trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

There’s also the withdrawals of would-be Presidential Candidates Bill Frist and Evan Bayh before the calendar even hits 2007, and rampant speculation that Barack Obama might be ready to run. John McCain and Hillary Clinton (pictured) are expected to officially launch their candidacies next week… as are many, many others.

That said, let’s take a look back at five defining moments of 2006, a year marked by a disastrous Iraq war… not to mention pages, hunting accidents, racial slurs and the (im)potency of blogging. It’s no surprise, considering this year’s mid-term election results, that most of these events did not end well for Republicans.

5. Paging Mark Foley!
First, Tom DeLay had to step down. That scandal was bad enough for the GOP, but even they couldn’t have foreseen a member of Congress getting caught seducing young male assistants, or “pages” via lewd text messages.

Florida Congressman Mark Foley immediately resigned, blamed his drinking problem and - what else - a predatory priest who molested him when he was younger. That didn’t the GOP from having to explain why they missed the warning signs about the six-term congressman’s odd behavior.

Foley lost the GOP another safe seat in Florida and was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as the public’s discontent with the GOP leadership. What began with the destruction of Jack Abramoff’s vile empire ended with raunchy text messages to underage boys. Democrats picked up more than 30 seats in the House of Representatives.

4. Welcome to America, Macaca
Outgoing U.S. Senator George Allen of Virginia (below) was a favorite among right-wingers who praised his party-line stances and easy-going charm. He was a lock for re-election and a rumored contender for the presidency.

It all unraveled when a young Indian- American man, working for his opponent, Democrat Jim Webb, heckled him during a campaign appearance.

Calling him by the name “macaca,” Allen welcomed him to America. On tape.

If anything was more embarrassing than his use of antiquated racial slurs, it was the puzzling, seemingly insincere denials Allen made about his remarks - claiming, among other things, that he was only referring to the young man’s hair - as well as his past use of racial slurs.

Things went from bad to worse, as he tumbled in the court of public opinion and lost a squeaker to Webb in November. Stunning.

3. The Rise and Fall of the Blog; The Fall and Rise of Joe Lieberman
Here today, gone tomorrow. Just three months after claiming their biggest victory, the left wing blogosphere suffered its biggest defeat - to the same candidate.

Bloggers heralded political newcomer Ned Lamont, who edged out three-term incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary. Painting Lieberman as a GOP lackey and trumpeting the race as a referendum on the Iraq war, which the senator so steadfastly defends to this day, Lamont backers propelled their guy to narrow victory.

But then the summer ended.

Almost immediately after left-wing pundits and bloggers demonstrated (and flaunted) their great effectiveness in the primary, they were proving their limitations in the general election, where Lieberman ran under the banner of the Connecticut For Lieberman party after getting the requisite number of signatures.

Even the most adamant Lamont supporters who had torn Lieberman to shreds for months could not offer a good reason for voting for their candidate beyond his anti-war stance. When they tried to explain why people should vote for Lamont and not just against Lieberman, it sounded forced.

Appealing broadly to independents and Republicans, Lieberman stuck to his guns, overcame his challenger and finished the year with a 10-point win, emerging as a more powerful political force than he was before losing the primary. Under the current Senate configuration, in which Democrats hold the slimmest of majorities, his power has never been greater.

2. Cheney’s Got a Gun (Sung to the Tune of the Classic Aerosmith Hit)
The sitting vice president has always done things his way. He’s not one for playing by the rules, or for explaining or justifying his positions to the media. But 2006 showed us that when you shoot another human being, you’ve got to speak up about it.

In February, Dick Cheney accidentally shot hunting pal Harry Whittington. What’s worse is that he didn’t get the word out for nearly a day. When he did, it was to the tiny Texas paper serving the town where the pair were hunting. Initially, the owner of the hunting ranch tried to downplay the mishap. Some Cheney backers tried to blame the victim, until the hunters came forward and confessed that it was indeed Cheney’s fault.

In an unprecedented move, White House spokesman Scott McClellan implicitly criticized Cheney’s handling of the incident, a symbol of Dick’s disdain for the obligations of his public role.

Never explain. Never apologize. That is how one senior White House official described Cheney’s PR policy. Even when shooting a man.

1. Rums Felled
Kudos to the newspaper(s) who thought up that one in the aftermath of the long overdue firing of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. George W. Bush spent so much time defending the embattled secretary that it almost came as a surprise when the president announced that he was ousting him because the Iraq War needed a new set of eyes.

It was a decisive move that could have signaled a course correction from Bush had he not sworn a week earlier, before the mid-term elections, that Rumsfeld was safe in his job. After the firing, a memo leaked, written by Rumsfeld just days before, that showed he was evaluating a wide range of alternative policies, including some that Democrats put forth.

The memo bears the secretary’s personal hallmarks of bureaucratic vengeance and ass-covering. Rumsfeld or someone serving his interests may have leaked it in an effort to show that he wasn’t blind to the reality in 2006 Iraq. But even George W. Bush may have been wise to this one.