From Newspaper editoraial

Colossal cost
Last Sunday marked the completion of the third year of invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies. The US invasion of Iraq was a comparatively easy job and Baghdad fell easily to the combined power of the US and its allied forces. Yet the headache in Iraq is far from over. The air-borne US attack, said to be the biggest air-borne assault since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, indicated how deep the trouble is in Iraq. According to unofficial estimates, about 38,000 Iraqi civilians have lost their lives in the attacks by allied forces and the insurgents. The insurgency in Iraq is getting worse each day and the popularity of US President George W Bush has plummeted with the arrival of soldiers in coffins in the United States. Over 2300 US troops are said to have died in Iraq since the Iraq war began on March 19 2003. The cost is no doubt very high. And this is a scar on the popularity of President Bush and his Republican Party.
A CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll on March 14 said the American dissatisfaction on the way in which their president was running the war in Iraq drove the popularity rating of President Bush down to 36 percent. Most Americans now think that the invasion of Iraq was a "mistake". After the US-led invasion in Iraq, a number of developments have taken place. The most important of them are the referendum on the constitution and parliamentary elections. Yet, what at first glance appear to be democratic exercises are not in reality democratic. The fact is the unfortunate nation has hardly known peace since March 2003 with insurgency ever on the rise and taking a heavy toll on Iraqis. The US led allied forces have been firm in their belief that all will be well soon. One hopes this will happen sooner than later without further loss of lives.
However, the present scenario in Iraq has left no room for optimism. Hardly a day goes by without reports of insurgents killing Iraqi security personnel or civilians. There cannot be any doubt that the senseless loss of lives has to be prevented and sanity brought back to the Iraqi political and social landscape. Some maintain that so long as the invasion forces remain in Iraq, there can be no peace. Time may now have come to give peace more than a chance and for the allied forces to quit the conquered land. This, of course, can only be done when a superpower like the United States is given a chance to save its face to make the withdrawal seem like a victory. The cost of Iraq invasion has been colossal both in terms of human lives and money involved and the need to rectify past mistakes has come.