10 years later, the Iraq war is still a failure

The mission, muddy as it was, remains unaccomplished

Paul Brandus

It was a sunny day in April 2005, and I was riding around Baghdad in the back of a humvee with some troops from the Louisiana National Guard. Armed to the teeth, eyes scanning back and forth for trouble, the soldiers were justifiably paranoid. Fearing roadside bombs, snipers, and ambushes, we felt like big fat targets. "I just want my guys to make it through the day," Army Captain Aaron Duplechin told me.

As we rumbled down the street, kicking up a cloud of dust and earning less-than-friendly stares from some of the locals, I thought of something Vice President Dick Cheney said a week before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

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Paul Brandus

An award-winning member of the White House press corps, Paul Brandus founded WestWingReports.com (@WestWingReport) and provides reports for media outlets around the United States and overseas. His career spans network television, Wall Street, and several years as a foreign correspondent based in Moscow, where he covered the collapse of the Soviet Union for NBC Radio and the award-winning business and economics program Marketplace. He has traveled to 53 countries on five continents and has reported from, among other places, Iraq, Chechnya, China, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.