Of Course the Legacy Is More Important Than the Lost Lives — What Was I Thinking?

Bush: U.S. to Stay in Iraq Despite Deaths
"Tragic as the recent U.S. deaths are, 'they don't establish a pattern that says U.S. casualties are getting consistently worse,' said Anthony H. Cordesman, an Iraq expert and former Pentagon intelligence official. Still, Bush faces a dilemma in deciding when and how many troops to withdraw. Cordesman, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, 'The president's legacy, if he fails in Iraq, historically is an absolute disaster. President Bush and the Bush administration can scarcely ignore that problem.'"

"If" he fails in Iraq. The president failed even from the first moments in Iraq, if his purpose in invading was, as he loudly and repeatedly insisted, to rid Iraq of WMDs - evidence of Iraq's possession of which, according to the best intelligence we now know to have been available to Bush at the time, was scant to nonexistent.