http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article352386.ece

Bush still sees no reason to apologise

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington -Published: 20 March 2006

If anyone was looking for even the slightest hint of second thoughts
from those led the US into Iraq, they would have been sorely
disappointed on the third anniversary of a war that is eating into
America's soul and that may well reshape its political landscape.

More sacrifice would be required, but "our goal is nothing less than
complete victory", President George Bush declared in his weekly radio
address yesterday.

Ignore the doom-mongering, ***** Cheney urged his countrymen on CBS's
Face the Nation programme. This was no civil war; rather the
insurgents had reached "a stage of desperation". On both the security
and political fronts, Iraq was showing "major progress".

Writing in The Washington Post, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary
- blamed by many for the absence of post-invasion planning - was
equally unrepentant. The big picture would be determined by history,
"not by daily headlines, website blogs, or the latest sensational
attack", Mr Rumsfeld declared. To retreat now would be "the modern
equivalent of handing post-war Germany back to the Nazis, or of asking
the former Communist states of eastern Europe to return to Soviet
domination because the West did not have the patience to see through
the job of turning them into free countries".

The plain fact, however, is that back in March 2003, almost no Bush
administration policy-maker could even imagine that yesterday the
country would be in agonising debate over a conflict three years old
with no end in sight - in an Iraq that even the pro-American former
prime minister Iyad Allawi said was in the midst of a civil war.

When Mr Bush triumphantly proclaimed an end to the war in May 2003
from the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, the Pentagon's
expectation was that by the end of that year no more than 30,000 US
troops would be deployed in Iraq. Today 130,000 are still there - and
General George Casey, the senior US commander in the country, warned
yesterday that he saw "a couple of more years of this". The war has
been a drain on American blood, treasure and morale. As of yesterday,
at least 2,311 US servicemen had died there, and more than 13,000 had
been wounded. By the end of 2006, the conflict will have cost $320bn
(£183bn).

The psychological cost is unquantifiable, but enormous. For a minority
the war has brought bereavement and personal sadness. Half of all
Americans know someone who has served in Iraq; some 10 per cent of
them had a relative or friend who had been killed or wounded there,
according to a poll by USA Today.

Mr Bush's place in history will be determined by his decision to
invade. Back in March 2003, his approval ratings stood at 70 per cent.
Now they have dropped to less than 40 per cent. Two-thirds of the
public believes the country is "on the wrong track". Iraq sweeps every
other issue off the table.

This November's mid-term elections meanwhile may well turn into a
referendum on Iraq, and the Republican Party may lose control of
either the House of Representatives or the Senate, conceivably both.

Even among the Republican faithful, support for Mr Bush is starting to
erode. "If you demand complete victory, you'll never leave," Senator
Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska Republican who is mulling a 2008 White House
run, said yesterday.

The war, he declared, was helping to bankrupt the country. "And if you
ask, are we better off, is the Middle East more stable than three
years ago, the answer is, 'Absolutely not'."