“America’s military misadventure in Iraq comes to an end this week, with Tuesday’s official declaration of an end to combat operations and a handover of authority to the Iraqi government. It’s a strange end — neither victory nor defeat — to a war made all the stranger since it’s not entirely clear what’s ending here. … it’s also a clear demonstration of the fact that the Obama administration’s policy of disengagement has succeeded as spectacularly as the Bush administration’s policy of invasion failed. And it’s important to recall the scope of that failure. The war was initially framed primarily in terms of the need to halt an Iraqi nuclear-weapons program that didn’t exist.” (09/02/10)