Iraq War

IT'S BAD enough that the St. Louis Cardinals got hot at the end of the year, barely made it into the playoffs and then beat the Phillies in five games. Their hot streak pushed them right into the World Series and a victory parade to celebrate their championship. St. Louis, recently, beat us a second time. This one refers to their throwing a second parade to celebrate and welcome home our military heroes as they returned from Iraq. What's wrong with Philadelphia and the rest of the cities?

I WATCHED President Obama's State of the Union address with great anticipation. I am an orthopedic surgeon who has always been an Obama supporter. Obama's passion for change is the same passion for change that I have. I wanted to help people. I soon realized that hope and a desire for change are not enough. Our health-care system is broken and cannot be changed overnight. It will take years to fix. As with the United States, we have serious problems. Obama cannot fix everything overnight.

Neal Auricchio Jr. fought two tours in Iraq, returning to war even after a sniper blew apart one of his calf muscles. But the 30-year-old Purple Heart winner and off-duty Woodbridge, N.J., police officer may never want to visit Philadelphia again. With good reason. Auricchio is the New York Rangers fan who was sucker-punched and beaten unconscious by three Flyers fans after the Winter Classic hockey game Monday night at Citizens Bank Park. The video of the beating went viral.

By Victor Davis Hanson Two terrible September days sum up the first decade of the new American millennium. The first, of course, was Sept. 11, 2001. Osama bin Laden's suicide terrorists that morning hit the Pentagon, knocked down the World Trade Center, killed 3,000 Americans, and left 16 acres of ash in Manhattan and $1 trillion in economic losses in their wake. Two invasions into Afghanistan and Iraq followed - along with a more nebulous third "war on terror" against Islamic radicalism.

Rewriting the history of Iraq war Trudy Rubin's column "A bipartisan effort doomed misadventure in Iraq" (Sunday) is an astonishing rewrite of history. Iraq represents the failure of the Republican right ideology. It was one of the greatest misjudgments in American history - all those lives lost, our economy wrecked, without even a valid reason for attack. Her argument that President Obama is at fault because he didn't stabilize Iraq and neutralize Iran's influence is purely fanciful.

WASHINGTON - President Obama on Saturday welcomed home troops who served in Iraq, offering up their service as a lesson of the nation's character. "There's a reason our military is the most respected institution in America," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. "They don't see themselves or each other as Democrats first or Republicans first. They see themselves as Americans first. . . . They remind us that we are all a part of something bigger, that we are one nation and one people.

Given that there were no weapons of mass destruction, did the United States achieve its objective in the Iraq war?

While Democrats and Republicans squabble in Congress, they deserve bipartisan credit for one stunning achievement: the defeat of the United States in Iraq. The willful blindness and strategic stupidity of the Bush administration led us into the Iraq war and the postwar disaster. The 2007 troop surge and Gen. David Petraeus created a slim hope that Iraq might yet become stable. That hope was dashed by the mistakes of the Obama team. As U.S. troops finish their pullout by year's end, no fine farewells can disguise the sad realities on the ground.

Not with a bang but a whimper - T.S. Eliot So officially ended the American involvement in the Iraq war, with a quiet flag-lowering ceremony Thursday in Baghdad overseen by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta. More than 1.5 million U.S. soldiers served in Iraq, 30,000 were wounded, and nearly 4,500 were killed serving their country. The Iraqi casualty toll dwarfs those numbers, and will only grow as sectarian strife continues. So how will history portray this nine-year war?

WASHINGTON - Congress passed a massive $662 billion defense bill yesterday after months of wrangling over how to handle captured terrorist suspects without violating Americans' constitutional rights. A last-minute compromise produced a truce, but lawmakers said the fight's not over. The Senate voted, 86-13, for the measure and will send it to President Obama for his signature. The bill would authorize money for military personnel, weapons systems, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and national-security programs in the Energy Department for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. The legislation is $27 billion less than Obama wanted and $43 billion less than Congress gave the Pentagon this year, a reflection of deficit-driven federal budgets, the end of the Iraq war and the drawdown in Afghanistan.