At this point, I'm not going to argue whether or not we should have gone to the war. We went to war in March. I still disagree with the Bush administration's decision to go to war at the moment it did, for the reason it did, and with the lack of international consensus on the subject; but that doesn't change the fact that we are still fighting a war in Iraq.
What I now take objection to is the apparent trend of this administration to knowingly and willingly paint the picture in Iraq as much more rosy than it actually is. Pentagon and White House officials have routinely dismissed war critics as shortsighted, and for most of the fall have run a campaign saying that Iraq is in much better shape than news reports indicate. Yet throughout what amounts to essentially this barrage of propaganda, very few facts have been presented.
People like Donald Rumsfeld stand up on that podium, present very little to no factual evidence and expect us to trust them. But then what about an internal Rumsfeld memo conceding U.S. forces were in for "a long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why can't Rumsfeld come out with that message to the public? And last week one day after saying that violent attacks in Baghdad just showed that terrorists were "desperate," Bush reversed course and said Iraq remains dangerous. Other examples: When looters pillaged major Iraqi cities, Rumsfeld dismissed the problem as "untidiness." Rumsfeld once said the violence in Baghdad, which has included attacks with truck bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and land mines, was similar to crime in Washington, D.C. Now I know D.C. is a little ghetto but you don't have insurgent rebels shooting off rocket-propelled grenades.
Other problems I have with the Bush administration's policy: this is the first time in modern history that the US has ever launched a unilateral preemptive strike. The reason North Korea has been rattling their saber since the spring time (aside from them taking advantage of what they see as an opportunity to get a few concessions if they can) is because the long-standing doctrine of the US not attacking until it is attacked no longer holds true. Bush can tell them that we won't attack all he wants but that doesn't change his track record of starting fights without an overt act of aggression made towards the US.
Finally, Iraq is the first war since Vietnam that this country has gotten into without presenting a clear exit strategy before it started. Obviously the magnitude of casualties is infinitessimal compared to Vietnam but the distinction remains. Vietnam had a huge effect on perception of the government. Public mistrust of the government reached an all-time high during Vietnam and has still not subsided to the level at which it existed before that war. As a result, the armed forces became all volunteers and every president from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton never started a war without a clear exit strategy.
I feel that Iraq was not the imminent threat it was presented as by the Bush administration, and it was certainly not enough of a threat to justify the break from the post-Vietnam military strategy used by Republican and Democrat presidents alike.