Mission accomplished

Two years ago today, in the mother of all photo ops, George W Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and declared the Iraq war over.

Who will ever forget the scene -- W in his flight suit, putting on his best Top Gun face, surrounded by men in uniform, with that proud banner, "Mission Accomplished."

Two years later, we have lost 1,444 more American lives since Mission Accomplished, and 1,581 in all. About 10 times that many have been wounded. Details on the casualty count.

Many will never recover. They have been permanently disfigured or scarred, lost limbs, or suffered lasting brain damage from head injuries. Others come back with psychological scars that we can’t see, but which are just as real and painful.

Already we are beginning to read and hear the stories of divorce, family crises, breakdowns, violence and mental anguish of returning veterans. Our society will live with those wounds and their aftermath for generations.

And then multiply that damage by 100 or 1000 and you will begin to have some idea of the magnitude of the damage we have inflicted on the people of Iraq.

More than 30 years after the last American troops left Vietnam, our veterans and our society are still paying that cost. There are more than 3.4 million Vietnam era vets who served in Southeast Asia, and 2.5 million (including me) were in Vietnam itself, although the maximum troop strength there was 540,000.There will be hundreds of thousands of veterans of Iraq – perhaps a million -- before we are through.

So what have we accomplished?

There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (Oh, that's right, there never were.)

Saddam is gone. There is a new, if shaky government.

An election was held, apparently without anyone worrying about photo ID cards.

We still have no exit strategy, and about 140,000 American troops still on the ground in Iraq.

There are more Iraquis than Americans being killed now by insurgents, if that makes you feel any better.

As we plod along, here is a tribute to those who have served and those who have fallen.