5 years on ...

Well, it's been five years since the balloon went up on the Iraq fiasco.

After five years, all we have to show for it are 4000 American dead, tens of thousands wounded, and a military well on its way to breaking.

We have killed, wounded, and displaced millions of Iraqis.

We have destroyed a goodly portion of the Iraqi infrastructure, forcing those people to live as they did in the Dark Ages.

Chaos prevails where once there was order and a generation (maybe more than one) of Iraqis will never be able to lead a normal life.

We have alienated much of the world and destroyed our reputation as peacemaker.

We have spent ourselves into monumental debt and a financial crisis.

As for the objectives laid out before the war, all were proved to be lies. We have learned over the past 5 years that there was absolutely no reason for us to invade that nation.

WMD? No.

Al-Qaeda? No.

Freedom and democracy? Not hardly.

Ladies and gentlemen, five years into World War Two, major combat operations were over and we were already working to set up stable governments in Europe and Asia.

The Korean War, five years in, was over and the new government in Seoul was functioning, the bombed out infrastructure well on its way to being rebuilt.

This pointless, illegal war has done nothing but destroy the American brand, turn the nation into a laughingstock, and piss away our wealth and blood. We have not only committed war crimes, and sanctioned them, and shaken the foundations this nation was founded on, but we have allowed the perpetrators to remain free and continue their reign of terror. It says we approve of what Bush has done in our name.

We have become no better than those we have come to despise, criminals, despots, and tyrants. To be an American today means you are stained with the blood of innocents and are judged by the actions of a moronic simpleton. To be an American today means you care nothing for the rights of others if they don't serve your own interests. To be an American today means not very much.

After five years of illegal, immoral war, we have done more damage to this nation than at any time in the last century. It will take us decades to repair the damage we have caused and the war should not last a day longer. We cannot afford to pay the cost, be it exacted in blood or money.

Pic thanks to HuffPo.

Five years on, we've hit the iceberg while the leadership is shouting for the stewards to rearrange the deck chairs and for the band to play on. The rest of us are running for the lifeboats. It's time to end it and bring our people home.