THE IRAQ WAR: Three years

White House no longer sees quick end to difficult war

James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, March 19, 2006

When the U.S.-led coalition attacked Iraq three years ago, the Bush administration was brimming with confidence that this would be a war only in the sense that a lot of bombs would be dropped and the military would seize, temporarily, a foreign capital. It was going to be swift, high-tech, clean.

Six weeks later, President Bush spoke in the past tense about Operation Iraqi Freedom, thanking the Iraqis who welcomed the U.S. troops and promising that democratic change would sweep the region.

Now, with sectarian violence roaring and casualties rising, the White House increasingly is talking, in the present tense, about a long war, meaning the old-fashioned kind -- "the crucible with the blood and the dust and the gore," as Gen. Richard Myers, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last fall.