Newsweek has an excellent recounting of a few of the President's many visits with families who have lost loved ones in the war. Must read.
One note I want to add in response to the editorializing in the article about whether or not President Bush questions his decision to go to war: he did not make the choice. When he says "I'm so sorry" to the families, he is saying he is sorry that planes flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and that field in Pennsylvania. He is saying that he is sorry that he had to be president in a time of war--a war he did not start.
The President firmly believes that the fighting in Iraq is a necessary part of that war, and he is of course correct, no matter what Evan Thomas or Holly Bailey or Cindy Sheehan or too many members of the media want to believe.
He is not sorry he made the choice; he is sorry that he had no choice.
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Iraq was a choice. It was not an inevitable battle field in the war against Al Qaeda.
Maybe it could have been a good choice, but the way the war has been waged has minimized that possibility.
I simply disagree. As unclear as the administration has been in their goals in this war, they have never said it was just a war on Al Qaeda. It is a war on Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and the states that aid that terrorism. Iraq under Sadaam Hussein was clearly one of those states. The fact that there are other countries that aid and abet terrorism does not change the reality about Iraq. The fact that Sadaam had a proven hostility toward the United States and a long and consistent record of resisting any means short of war added urgency to the decision. President Bush had no choice but to go to war in Iraq.
As best I can tell, the war has been waged like any other--with successes and setbacks. The insurgency continues, but huge sections of the country are peaceful (one example is Sadr City), natural and economic resources are getting to the people, women have increased rights (although that will take a long time to take hold), and they had a successful election. As for American security, there is little chance that Iraq is a staging point, economic or otherwise, for 9/11-type attacks on the United States.
Maybe I'm wrong about some of the details, but the increasingly frequent statements of fact that the war is a disaster are simply not right.
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