Cross-posted from Blue Jersey
Five years ago today, President Bush triumphantly -- and erroneously -- declared "mission accomplished" on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln while standing in front of a big banner as part of a PR stunt hatched by Karl Rove. He went on to proclaim that major combat operations in Iraq had ended. But since President Bush made that pronouncement, almost 4,000 additional American troops have lost their lives. And close to 30,000 have been seriously wounded in action.
Each month, President Bush continues to spend $12 billion on a war that should never have been waged and with no exit strategy to get our troops out of harm's way. The war in Iraq has failed to make us safer and al Qaeda has only grown stronger. Now, 3,000 additional members of the New Jersey National Guard alone are scheduled to deploy to Iraq this summer. This is the largest deployment of our state's Guardsmen since World War II.
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