In honor of this milestone, I thought I’d post a juxtapositon of words and images about Iraq War II, from the run-up to war to now.

I am glad, someday, historians will recall that disposing a murderous dictator was a good and noble cause. Thank you, Damian, for that silver lining.

Anyway, here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly. “It is what it is.” Quotes are from BrainyQuote; images from Google:

Saddam’s goal is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed.
Madeleine Albright

Iraq has a new opportunity to comply with all these relevant resolutions of the Security Council.
Kofi Annan

I pray that this council, which will probably be too late to save Iraq, will do what it can, which will be immeasurably strong in what it does in trying to save our democracy.
Ed Asner

We should be proud of liberating the 26 million people in Iraq and should remember that this is why it is important to stick it out to it’s successful conclusion.
Evan Bayh

They have been saying for a long time that Iraq made an effort to import active uranium, and my colleague demonstrated the other day that they came to the conclusion that it was a fake document that everybody is relying upon.
Hans Blix

We estimate that once Iraq acquires fissile material – whether from a foreign source or by securing the materials to build an indigenous fissile material capability – it could fabricate a nuclear weapon within one year.
John Bolton

My son is not wild about going back to Iraq, but he’d sure rather do that than sacrifice all that he and his fellow soldiers have accomplished by leaving too early and inviting chaos.
Kit Bond

If we can rebuild Iraq, we can rebuild Illinois and Indiana and if we can do Baghdad, we can do Baltimore.
Carol Moseley Braun

America is a friend to the people of Iraq. Our demands are directed only at the regime that enslaves them and threatens us. When these demands are met, the first and greatest benefit will come to Iraqi men, women and children.
George W. Bush

Mission accomplished? The mission in Iraq, as laid out by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, has failed.
Robert Byrd

Victory is the only option. And we will be victorious in Iraq.
Andrew Card

I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false.
Jimmy Carter

On the issues that I care deeply about – the environment, Roe vs. Wade, the war in Iraq, with no weapons of mass destruction, the tax cuts that are now leading to deficits, I’ve got some deep issues with the president.
Lincoln Chafee

We urge all democratic nations and the United Nations to answer the Iraqi Governing Council’s call for support for the people of Iraq in making the transition to democracy.
Dick Cheney

Bush does not want to go down in history as the president who lost in Iraq. His strategy to the extent he has one is to hang tough and let whoever succeeds him take the fall.
Eleanor Clift

No matter what you think about the Iraq war, there is one thing we can all agree on for the next days – we have to salute the courage and bravery of those who are risking their lives to vote and those brave Iraqi and American soldiers fighting to protect their right to vote.
Hillary Clinton

There’s no connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq.
George Clooney

Genius, scholar, and war hero though he is, you have to admit – or maybe you should think about admitting – that George Bush might have rushed things a little in invading Iraq.
Alan Colmes

I am a Korean War veteran. I support our troops as much as anyone in this body, but I do so by advocating redeployment out of Iraq as soon as it can be safely done.
John Conyers

I can’t accept collective responsibility for the decision to commit Britain now to military action in Iraq without international agreement or domestic support.
Robin Cook

We came to Iraq to liberate them and to make our world a safer place.
Larry Craig, [advocate for clean bathrooms]

Iraq is not the only nation in the world to possess weapons of mass destruction, but it is the only nation with a leader who has used them against his own people.
Tom Daschle

The fact is that we wouldn’t be in Iraq if it weren’t for Democrats like Senator Kerry.
Howard Dean

What President Bush did in his doctrine of preemptive strike and in his war in Afghanistan and in Iraq was to turn even his allies in Europe negatively toward America.
Louis Farrakhan

The president welcomes peaceful protests – it is a time-honored tradition. The president agrees violence is not the answer in Iraq, and that’s why he hopes Saddam Hussein will disarm.
Ari Fleischer

Iraq is a manufactured conflict for the sake of geopolitical dominance in the area.
Janeane Garofalo

Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.
Al Gore

In my judgment, the greatest risks are international terrorist groups like al Qaeda and Hezbollah. The war in Iraq has taken our attention off those priorities.
Bob Graham

Syria is a terrorist state by any definition and is so classified by the State Department. I happen to think Iran is too. Iraq, Iran, Syria, they’re all involved.
Alexander Haig

When Bush first got elected, the very first time there was talk of going to war with Iraq, the mainstream media gave his position total credibility. I didn’t get it then, and I don’t get it now.
Ed Harris

If today is anything like the typical day of the past 3 years, three American soldiers will die in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Taliban will get a little stronger in Afghanistan and the civil war will continue to be enhanced in Iraq.
Alcee Hastings

Our nation must manage significant national security challenges over the next several years. We are already facing a potential conflict with Iraq, new challenges on the Korean peninsula, and key decisions in the president’s plans to transform the military.
Duncan Hunter

I said I’m the president of Iraq… I did not say deposed.
Saddam Hussein

We can be proud of our record as an international beacon of liberty. From fostering democracies in Eastern Europe to the stabilization of Iraq and Afghanistan, we have been true to that calling and helped spread freedom to oppressed peoples everywhere.
Kay Bailey Hutchison

The President’s speech suggested to me that were we to follow his leadership, we will be in Iraq not for months, but for years. I also hope I am wrong on this.
Daniel Inouye

It’s now clear that from the very moment President Bush took office, Iraq was his highest priority as unfinished business from the first Bush Administration. His agenda was clear: find a rationale to get rid of Saddam.
Edward Kennedy

My level of cynicism about the reasons that took us to war against Iraq remain just as well-developed as they were before I went.
Ted Koppel

Iraq does not pose an imminent threat to the United States of any of its neighboring nations.
Dennis Kucinich

Why do the President and Vice-President constantly change the subject when asked to explain why things are going so badly in Iraq? The answer is simple. They have been consistently wrong about Iraq, and the results speak for themselves.
Patrick Leahy

I think we should take Iraq and Iran and combine them into one country and call it Irate. All the pissed off people live in one place and get it over with.
Denis Leary

And then there’s Israel – a lot of people support Israel, and it’s important to Israel to take out Iraq. So it’s all mixed together. It’s a combination of motives.
Chris Matthews

We must win in Iraq. If we withdraw, there will be chaos; there will be genocide; and they will follow us home.
John McCain

A free and prosperous Iraq will be a major blow to the terrorists and their desire to establish a safe haven in Iraq where they can plan and plot attacks.
Scott McClellan

The new troops in Iraq need to be Iraqi troops.
Mitch McConnell

Bombing the Murrah Federal Building was morally and strategically equivalent to the U.S. hitting a government building in Serbia, Iraq, or other nations.
Timothy McVeigh

The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich.
Michael Moore

No candidate can win a presidential race advocating gay marriage and opposing the military action in Iraq.
Dick Morris

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
Barack Obama

The president led us into the Iraq war on the basis of unproven assertions without evidence; he embraced a radical doctrine of pre-emptive war unprecedented in our history; and he failed to build a true international coalition.
Nancy Pelosi

Any time you have a situation in which you are calling for more time rather than calling for Iraq to immediately comply, it plays into the hands of Saddam Hussein.
Condoleezza Rice

The President, in talking about freedom and democracy, is sparking a wave of very positive democratic sentiment that might help us override both Islamic fundamentalism that has formed in that region, and also some of the hatred for our policies of invading Iraq.
Bill Richardson

I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq today will last five days, five weeks or five months, but it won’t last any longer than that.
Donald Rumsfeld

Looking at the high cost of occupation in Iraq and the needs we have in this country, would it not have been better to have smaller tax cuts in order to keep down the deficits.
Tim Russert

A devastating commentary on the war in Iraq is that we have been unable to spend money on infrastructure.
Charles Schumer

I would love to support Hillary for president if she would come out against the travesty in Iraq. But I don’t think she can speak out against the occupation because she supports it.
Cindy Sheehan

Bush’s war in Iraq has done untold damage to the United States. It has impaired our military power and undermined the morale of our armed forces. Our troops were trained to project overwhelming power. They were not trained for occupation duties.
George Soros