A costly failure in Iraq

Re “The 12-foot-high, concrete ‘success’ in Iraq,” Opinion, Dec. 20

Rosa Brooks’ last sentence says it all: “It’s defeat.” No matter how you look at Iraq and what has been accomplished there, only one conclusion can possibly be reached: Iraq is a catastrophic defeat for the Bush administration and the U.S. And to prove the point, let those who refuse to admit so be loudly reminded of what Iraq was supposed to be and what it has cost us, the country and region. Iraq was going to be, according to the dreamers in the Bush administration, the thriving model of a unified, Western-style, secular democracy. Instead it is a worst-case scenario, a walled and divided nightmare that has empowered our enemies and destabilized the whole region.

Carl Mattioli

Newtonville, Mass.