Four Unspeakable Truths about Iraq ... if you're a Politician

When it comes to Iraq, there are two kinds of presidential candidates. The disciplined ones, like Hillary Clinton, carefully avoid acknowledging reality. The more candid, like John McCain and Barack Obama, sometimes blurt out the truth, but quickly apologize.

1. For many presidential aspirants, the first unspeakable truth is simply that the war was a mistake. Reasons for refusing to admit that the war itself was a mistake are surprisingly similar across party lines. It is seldom easy to admit you were wrong.

2. A second truth universally unacknowledged is that American soldiers being killed, grotesquely maimed, and then treated like whining freeloaders at Walter Reed Hospital are victims as much as "heroes." John Kerry was the first to violate this taboo when he was still a potential candidate last year. Kerry appeared to tell a group of California college students that it sucks to go and fight in Iraq. A variety of conservative goons instantly denounced Kerry for disrespecting the troops. Americans who attend college and have good employment options after graduation are unlikely to sign up for free tours of the Sunni Triangle.

3. Reality No. 3 is that the American lives lost in Iraq have been lives wasted. Barack Obama crossed this boundary on his first trip to Iowa as an announced candidate when he declared at a rally, "We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged and to which we have now spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted." With lightning speed, Obama said he had misspoken and apologized to military families.
John McCain used the same proscribed term when he announced his candidacy on The Late Show With David Letterman.* "We've wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives." telling the truth before retreating to the approved banality and euphemism

4. A fourth and final near-certainty, which is in some ways the hardest for politicians to admit, is that America is losing or has already lost the Iraq war. The United States is the strongest nation in the history of the world and does not think of itself as coming in second in two-way contests. When it does so, it is slow to accept that it has been beaten. Even today, American politicians tend not to describe Vietnam as a straightforward defeat.
Politicians on both sides believe that acknowledging unpleasant truth will weaken them and undermine those still attempting to persevere on our behalf. But nations and individuals do not grow weaker by confronting the truth. They grow weaker by avoiding it and coming to believe their own evasions.

[Excerpt of an article by Jacob Weisberg, Slate]