Lynn C. Woolsey: “Yesterday the 1,000th American soldier was killed in Iraq; 1,000 young men and women who will never again return to…”

“Yesterday the 1,000th American soldier was killed in Iraq; 1,000 young men and women who will never again return to their homes and experience the warm embrace of their parents and others who love them. Young men and young women have died for a war the United States entered not of necessity, but out of choice. An attack against a country that never possessed the illegal weapons it was accused of possessing, a war in a country that never once threatened the United States. And this war is not over. Worst of all, of the 1,000 soldiers that have died in Iraq, over 850 of them were killed after President Bush declared the 'end of major combat operations.' He made his now-infamous speech aboard a Navy vessel displaying a banner that read 'Mission Accomplished.' That was 15 months ago yesterday. Obviously the Bush administration has failed, failed dramatically in its postwar custodianship of Iraq. The abuses at Abu Ghraib have emboldened our enemies and provided them with ammunition for the war of images waged on the front pages of newspapers worldwide. The moral support shared by countries around the world in the months after September 11, 2001, has long since evaporated. When it comes to supporting our troops abroad, we have not done much better. A recent Pentagon study acknowledged that about one-third of all American casualties in Iraq could have been prevented if the military had outfitted every soldier with state-of-the-art body armor.”