Sen. Barack Obama was quoted on Saturday:
"We now have spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted."
On Sunday he apologized, and again today.
"Even as I said it, I realized I had misspoken," Obama said. "It is not at all what I intended to say, and I would absolutely apologize if any (military families) felt that in some ways it had diminished the enormous courage and sacrifice that they'd shown." IHT
Senator Obama touched (another) third rail in US politics in his statement in Ohio. Thou shalt not refer to the lives of US military killed in Iraq as wasted. Thou shalt not say they died in vain, or question "did they die in vain?"
His remarks in context came during the week when it was again in the news that the US has lost accounts for billions of US taxpayer dollars in Iraq, under the caretaking of Paul Bremer. When this nightmare is finally over, and the final accounting is made, when they ask, "Who lost the war in Iraq, and when did it happen?" I wonder if they will not answer Paul Bremer lost the war, and it happened in the weeks just after "Mission Accomplished" when the Iraqi army was dissolved by the US Coalition, and Baghdad was looted.
See: The Second Most Expensive War in American History
The lives of those 3,000 Americans were wasted by the US government. The ill-defined mission in Iraq is a failure. If it was a fight to stop terrorism, it has failed; if it was a war to bring democracy to Iraq, it has failed. Iraq is the most corrupt country in the world right now.
This was the mission:
"The brave men and women of the U.S. military are fighting extremists in order to stop them from attacking on our soil again."
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Deputy Press Secretary Scott Stanzel
They died for lies like these.
How Senator Obama misspoke:
In the context of a faith whose basic tenet is that life is sacred, the worst crime is to waste someone else's life. This is what the Bush administration has done, and it is this to which Senator Obama was pointing when he said 3,000 US lives have been wasted in the debacle that is the Iraq war.
But he was also right to apologize, and quickly, to the military families, and those in the military. Service is honorable, but this is not an honorable war. If there's a more diplomatic way to say it, I'm confident Senator Obama will find that way.