It's sobering that we passed 4,000 American deaths in Iraq the same week we marked the fifth anniversary of our horribly ill-advised invasion of a country that represented no danger to us.

Who can forget a deluded President Bush strutting around the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to declare "mission accomplished" just a couple of months after he started the bombing, when only a few dozen U.S. forces had lost their lives?

Bush promised back then that the war would cost no more than $100 billion, but the cost today is $600 billion and climbing at a rate of more than $12 billion a month. Some estimate our national treasury could be $3 trillion lighter by time it's all over, leaving other pressing public needs begging.

There's no evidence that Iraq was part of the terrorism network responsible for the 9/11 attacks, or possessed weapons that posed any threat whatsoever to our citizens. A credible case can be made that we're less secure rather than more as a result of this misadventure.

Still, Bush and Vice President Cheney blithely insist it's all been "well worth the effort," even though two-thirds of Americans view this war as a failure. Our toothless watchdogs in Congress have failed to demand a meaningful accounting of the blunders, miscalculations and outright deceptions.

How much longer are we going to sit by and allow our tragic mistakes to compound?