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consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and
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without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle
East, and encourage the worst, rather than the best, impulses of the Arab
world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda.
The speech was well received; activists began circulating the text on the
Internet, and I established a reputation for speaking my mind on hard issues-a
reputation that would carry me through a tough Democratic primary. But I had
no way of knowing at the time whether my assessment of the situation in Iraq
was correct. When the invasion was finally launched and U.S. forces marched
unimpeded through Baghdad, when I saw Saddams statue topple and watched the
President stand atop the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, a banner behind him
proclaiming Mission Accomplished, I began to suspect that I might have been
wrong-and was relieved to see the low number of American casualties involved.
And now, three years later-as the number of American deaths passed two
thousand and the number of wounded passed sixteen thousand; after $250 billion
in direct spending and hundreds of billions more in future years to pay off
the resulting debt and care for disabled veterans; after two Iraqi national
elections, one Iraqi constitutional referendum, and tens of thousands of Iraqi
deaths; after watching anti-American sentiment rise to record levels around
the world and Afghanistan begin to slip back into chaos-I was flying into
Baghdad as a member of the Senate, partially responsible for trying to figure
out just what to do with this mess.
The landing at Baghdad International Airport turned out not to be so
bad-although I was thankful that we couldnt see out the windows as the C-130
bucked and banked and dipped its way down. Our escort officer from the State
Department was there to greet us, along with an assortment of military
personnel with rifles slung over their shoulders. After getting our security
briefing, recording our blood types, and being fitted for helmets and Kevlar
vests, we boarded two Black Hawk helicopters and headed for the Green Zone,
flying low, passing over miles of mostly muddy, barren fields crisscrossed by
narrow roads and punctuated by small groves of date trees and squat concrete
shelters, many of them seemingly empty, some bulldozed down to their
foundations. Eventually Baghdad came into view, a sand-colored metropolis set
in a circular pattern, the Tigris River cutting a broad, murky swath down its
center. Even from the air the city looked worn and battered, the traffic on
the streets intermittent-although almost every rooftop was cluttered with
satellite dishes, which along with cell phone service had been touted by U.S.
officials as one of the successes of the reconstruction.
I would spend only a day and a half in Iraq, most of it in the Green Zone, a
ten-mile-wide area of central Baghdad that had once been the heart of Saddam
Husseins government but was now a U.S.-controlled compound, surrounded along
its perimeter by blast walls and barbed wire. Reconstruction teams briefed us
about the difficulty of maintaining electrical power and oil production in the
face of insurgent sabotage; intelligence officers described the growing threat
of sectarian militias and their infiltration of Iraqi security forces. Later,
we met with members of the Iraqi Election Commission, who spoke with
enthusiasm about the high turnout during the recent election, and for an hour
we listened to U.S. Ambassador Khalilzad, a shrewd, elegant man with
world-weary eyes, explain the delicate shuttle diplomacy in which he was now
engaged, to bring Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish factions into some sort of
workable unity government.
In the afternoon we had an opportunity to have lunch with some of the troops
in the huge mess hall just off the swimming pool of what had once been
Saddams presidential palace. They were a mix of regular forces, reservists,
and National Guard units, from big cities and small towns, blacks and whites
and Latinos, many of them on their second or third tour of duty. They spoke
with pride as they told us what their units had accomplished-building schools,
protecting electrical facilities, leading newly trained Iraqi soldiers on
patrol, maintaining supply lines to those in far-flung regions of the country.
Again and again, I was asked the same question: Why did the U.S. press only
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report on bombings and killings? There was progress being made, they
insisted-I needed to let the folks back home know that their work was not in
vain.
It was easy, talking to these men and women, to understand their
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