Lynn C. Woolsey: “on March 1, 2003, the United States stopped fighting a war in Iraq and became the occupants of Iraq. That was when the…”

“on March 1, 2003, the United States stopped fighting a war in Iraq and became the occupants of Iraq. That was when the U.S. occupation began. March 1, 2003, is the day that President Bush, speaking under a huge banner with the words ``Mission Accomplished'' declared major combat operations in Iraq had ended. At that moment, the United States military should have left Iraq. Military commanders and policy experts advised the President, but he failed to grasp that deploying hundreds of thousands of soldiers to Iraq and invading Baghdad would be like sticking your hand in a beehive and trying to remove it without getting stung. Even the President's father, President George H.W. Bush, agreed on this point. That is why during the first Gulf War during 1991, he stopped short of having the U.S. military actually enter Baghdad. If we had left after, according to the President, the ``mission'' had been ``accomplished,'' we could have prevented the deaths of over 2,400 American soldiers. More than 18,000 others wouldn't have returned home with life-changing injuries, and thousands of others wouldn't suffer from severe psychological trauma as a result of fighting a war halfway across the world. And countless thousands, tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians who have been killed might still be alive in Iraq. The last 3\1/2\ years since the President's ``mission accomplished'' speech have been unsuccessful in all ways in Iraq.…”