Mission Accomplished... Eventually. Maybe.

Condi says Americans must be ready to accept more violence in Iraq, but that just means peace is around the corner...

AP: Rice Says No 'V-E Day' on Horizon in Iraq

Even assuming Iraq forms a national government, there will be no immediate end to the violence, nothing like V-E Day marking World War II's end in Europe, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday.

Peace will come gradually to Iraq, more than three years after the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, she said at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.

"Americans must be prepared for violence to continue in Iraq, even after a government is formed. There will be no Iraqi equivalent of V-E Day or V-J Day," Rice said...

We're turning the corner. Freedom is on the march. Stay the course. The insurgency's in its last throes. Bring 'em on. I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong. It could last six days, six weeks; I doubt six months. I think, reasonably certain is the idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces is far from the mark. In the battle for Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. Mission accomplished.

I feel ill.

Why does anyone take these people seriously anymore? Who are these wistfully naive 33% (and that's a Fox News poll) who still support these people and/or give them the benefit of the doubt? Everything they used to sell or justify the war has turned to be a lie at worst and an exaggeration at best (most recently, the revelations about what they knew on the infamous 'WMD trailers'). In addition, everything they've told us since the war has been a lie- insisting that any 'problems' you might hear are either lies of the media or somehow signs that victory is just around the next corner and the one after that until you're back at square one with nothing to show for it except a few thousand caskets.

I guess the decision as to when 'victory' will be achieved or when we can move on there is up to future Presidents to decide... The Decider doesn't want to be burdened with those hard choices.

And still Sec. Rumsfeld will not concede a single mistake. The hubris borders on pathological.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi parliament session is delayed again after the Prime Minister signaled he will step down.

All this as the financial burden of the war continues to grow-

With the expected passage this spring of the largest emergency spending bill in history, annual war expenditures in Iraq will have nearly doubled since the U.S. invasion, as the military confronts the rapidly escalating cost of repairing, rebuilding and replacing equipment chewed up by three years of combat.

The cost of the war in U.S. fatalities has declined this year, but the cost in treasure continues to rise, from $48 billion in 2003 to $59 billion in 2004 to $81 billion in 2005 to an anticipated $94 billion in 2006, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The U.S. government is now spending nearly $10 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan, up from $8.2 billion a year ago, a new Congressional Research Service report found...

Good thing we don't have any deficits or domestic programs or destroyed Gulf Coasts at home to worry about.

But hey, Scott McClellan's gone, so everything should be turning around soon.

[PS- Don't worry... I'm sure the Iran invasion will be a total cakewalk.]