Just a short word about the war in Iraq. We know now that the Bush administration was making plans for the invasion of Iraq at least six months before the 9/11/01 attacks. When the attacks occurred, the administration took advantage of the opportunity to invade, though the attacks were not connected with Iraq in any way.
This was a disaster. It is now our responsibility to help Iraq recover from the damage our nation has done. I am not in a position to know whether conditions for Iraqi civilians would get better or worse if the U.S. military left Iraq; lots of people have opinions about what would happen, but I don't think anyone can claim to know with certainty.
We do know that the 9/11 attacks were a tragic disaster for our nation, and that we have compounded the tragedy by our response. President Bush is responsible for the unnecessary deaths of 3,067 members of the U.S. military, according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. Remember that, according to CNN, "[t]he 9/11 attacks killed 2,973 people, not including the 19 hijackers who crashed four commercial airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania." Of course, the President is also ultimately responsible for the deaths of at least 54,432 civilians, according to IraqBodyCount.org.
At the same time, the Bush administration is engaged in an attack on the founding principles of our nation. See Zbigniew Brzezinski's editorial, published in the Washington Post on 3/25/2007. It is not unpatriotic to say: we are not a nation of secret laws. We do not hold people in prison indefinitely. We do not torture, and we do not condone torture. We do not ask our soldiers to give their lives needlessly. We must not remain silent.
(update 3/27/07)