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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

"Mission Accomplished" anniversary is not a moment for gloating

I'm a little disgusted by the gleeful posts celebrating/mocking the recurrence of this "Mission Accomplished" day. I understand the intent is to highlight just how wrong this administration has been on the war by highlighting one of the most outrageous and exploitative photo ops, but still, this is not a happy day.

ThinkProgress has a chart of the disaster. On the day of that speech, 139 American soldiers had been killed, now it's 3,351. On May 1, 2003, 542 US troops had been wounded, now it's 24,912.

Yes, that picture does powerfully capture the complete miscomprehension of this conflict in their declaration of early victory, but this mistake is not a "blue dress." It is thousands of US dead, tens of thousands of US wounded, and anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 Iraqi dead and god knows how many wounded.

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