“W. says he can’t set a deadline to bring the troops home. But he started the war on an artificial deadline; he declared a ‘Mission Accomplished’ end to major hostilities on an artificial deadline; he was inflexible on deadlines for handing over Iraqi sovereignty and holding elections. And he tried to force the Iraqis to produce a constitution on his deadline when the squabbling politicians of the ethnic and religious factions hadn’t even reached consensus on little things like ‘Do we want one country?’

— Maureen Dowd

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