Readers' long slog of waiting for my apology to Bush

Wednesday, on the fifth anniversary of "The Fall of Baghdad," I searched Youtube and watched old news videos of Saddam Hussein's statue being toppled -- remembering the nation's celebratory mood that day.

"It's Over," newspaper headlines proclaimed then.

Arrogant Dick Cheney, cackling as if he were the Penguin telling Batman and Robin how he had outsmarted them, chided Iraq war skeptics: "In the early days of the war, the plan was criticized by some retired military officers embedded in TV studios. With every day and every advance by our coalition forces, the wisdom of that plan becomes more apparent."

Fox News commentator Brit Hume scolded liberal war skeptics for "getting it wrong," while teammate Tony Snow concluded, "the three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."

Columnist Cal Thomas, long a staple on our editorial page, went so far as to suggest that any of the "false prophets" who predicted the invasion of Iraq wouldn't go smoothly should be brought before "a cultural war crimes tribunal" and their words archived forever "to remind the public of journalism's many mistakes, as well as the errors of certain politicians and retired generals, and allow it to properly judge their words the next time they feel the urge to prophesy."

And some Daily Herald readers blasted my liberal anti-war columns, and pitied me for being so tainted with liberalism that I couldn't even celebrate our nation's glorious victory, as illustrated by that statue's tumble.

"I presume that you receive many e-mails, but I do have a request. When the Gulf War II is over, when our troops have triumphed with minimal U.S. and civilian casualties, when Iraq's biological and chemical stores are destroyed, when an aggressive dictator is deposed and when Iraq's oil riches are wielded by a government selected by the Iraqi people…send me an e-mail when your 'Oops. Sorry W, guess I was wrong' editorial is posted," wrote WTK of Naperville.

Five years later, we know that statue-toppling was another manufactured moment created by an inept administration that has misled us in every step of this war. Even if we had indeed won the war on April 9, 2003, the invasion of Iraq still would have been an unnecessary war fought under false pretenses.

Donald Rumsfeld "celebrated" the "Fall of Baghdad" by presenting a flag to Michael Jordan during his last game with the Wizards. He'd need another 4,000 or so flags to cover the coffins of soldiers still fighting that war in 2008.

Peace activists Pat and Paul Vogel of Barrington recall an early meeting of anti-war volunteers.

"Someone threw out that we might be there five years or so, and we were just astonished," Pat Vogel remembers. "Nobody wanted to believe that…It's just sad to see what happened."

Sadness propels emotional songwriter Mona Abboud of Sleepy Hollow to phone me every once in a while to weep about our dead soldiers and the Iraqis killed. Torture and revenge killings still exist in Iraq, where more citizens have been killed in our war than were slaughtered during Hussein's horrific reign.

It's all so maddening. But the initial anger at being told Iraq helped Al-Qaeda and was so close to unleashing weapons of mass destruction that we couldn't give United Nations' weapons inspectors one more day to find them has softened for some.

"You can't sustain that level of anger. It just turns into sadness," Pat Vogel says.

Optimism that public and world opinion could change leaders' minds was dismissed, says Paul Vogel, noting Cheney recently responded to criticism with, "So?"

"It's maddening and depressing," says the father who visited Iraq to see his then-soldier son, and came home committed to peace groups. "A lot of those people thought somehow the leaders would come to their senses. It never happened."

"It's really sad and discouraging," Pat Vogel says, "but on it goes."

Five years and counting. So it goes.