So there I was, minding my own morning business, when I heard Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta making a speech on my Tee Vee Box saying that BushCo’s fraudulent war, the invasion of a sovereign country that did not attack us, that did not have “weapons of mass destruction,” that did not provide any evidence of a looming “mushroom cloud,” was worth it. “Shock and awe-ing” Iraq to smithereens was worth it.

I’msorrywhat?

That’s right, Panetta thinks that nearly nine years, 4,500 dead Americans, 100,000 dead Iraqis, 32,000 wounded Americans wounded (don’t get me started on the post traumatic stress and suicides, the alcoholism, the unemployment, the homelessness, the gut-wrenching despair that so many veterans suffer), and more than $800 billion… all that was “worth it” to Panetta.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has arrived in Baghdad to formally end the nearly nine-year war in Iraq.

He says it was worth the cost in blood and dollars, as it set Iraq on a path to democracy. [...]

During several stops in Afghanistan this week, Panetta made it clear that the US can be proud of its accomplishments in Iraq, and that the cost of the bitterly divisive war was worth it.

“We spilled a lot of blood there,” Panetta said. “But all of that has not been in vain. It’s been to achieve a mission making that country sovereign and independent and able to govern and secure itself.”