The American media loves anniversaries of major events because these provide the ideal news pegs to do follow-up stories. You would think that they would have pulled out the stops for the seventh anniversary of the US war on Iraq, a conflict that was described by the Pentagon in its first days as a "cake walk" and designed as a quick intervention modelled after the in-and-out combat of Operation Desert Storm ending Baghdad's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. However, not only did US plans not work out that way, but the news commitment faded and, in the process - as one would expect - so did public attention. The networks went from 'all the war, all the time,' to withdrawing troops long before the military did. As a result, the situation was uniformly described as "quiet" with no real assessment offered on the costs, casualties and consequences of what just about everyone considers a botched and failed mission. This has been a war which Washington still seems unable to end despite the campaign promises of a new president.
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