it, bad so many americans were talked into it by double talk and cheap propaganda that should have been cut through by the media like a knife through soft butter. that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. "the last word with lawrence o'donnell" starts right now. the president decides that twice as long as world war ii is long enough for the iraq war. >> after nearly nine years, america's war in iraq will be over. >> our nation enters this conflict reluctantly. major combat operations in iraq have ended. the united states and our allies have prevailed. united states military forces captured saddam hussein. we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. turns out he did. he didn't.

he didn't. >> remember during the 2008 campaign -- >> i will finally finish the fight against bin laden. >> it was certainly justified. >> when they come home, they get the care and benefits they have earned. >> this is mission accomplished without the banner. >> i announced a new strategy that would end our combat mission in iraq and remove all of our troops by the end of 2011. >> promises made. promises kept. >> he said what he would do and he did it. >> today we've removed more than 100,000 troops. >> as promised. the key word. >> his commitment to wind down the war in iraq. >> the last american soldier will cross the border out of iraq with their heads held high. >> as promised, andrea. that's the whole key. >> i can say our troops in iraq will definitely be home for the holidays. >> the troops will be home for the holidays. that is a phrase that many presidents have wanted to say. >> this is what the president will take to the campaign trail. >> the nation that we need to build and the nation that we will build is our own.

>> the need to end this war so we can spend $10 billion rebuilding cities all across america. >> today president obama announced from the white house briefing room that he has ordered all 39,000 u.s. troops remaining in iraq to return home by the end of this year. the president framed his announcement as fulfilling a promise he made as a candidate for president. >> as a candidate for president, i pledged to bring the war in iraq to a responsible end. so today i can report that as promised, the rest of our troops in iraq will come home by the end of the year. after nearly nine years, america's war in iraq will be over. across america, our servicemen and women will be reunited with their families. today, i can say that our troops

in iraq will definitely be home for the holidays. >> president obama's announcement today comes as he indicated nearly nine years after president george w. bush announced the invasion of iraq. >> the people of the united states and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder. we will meet that threat now with our army, air force, navy, coast guard and marines so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of firefighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities. now that conflict has come, the only way to limit its duration is to apply decisive force. and i assure you, this will not be a campaign of half measures and we will accept no outcome but victory. >> the iraq war has cost the

united states over $700 billion. about the same as ten years of the vietnam war in current 2011 dollars. more than 1 million americans have served in iraq since the war began in 2003. the war has left 4,482 of those americans dead. 32,213 wounded. and 1,146 left as amputees. there is no accurate official count of how many iraqis have been killed or wounded in this war, but we do know that they suffered much more than we did with more than 100,000 casualties. republicans have been predictably critical of president obama's withdrawal plan. most of them o blblivious that s the withdrawal plan but in place by president bush. >> whether or not it's the right

thing to do, i would consult with the commanders. the thing that i wouldn't do that the president is doing is telling the enemy how many troops you're going to bring out and when you're going to bring them out. i don't think that's a good strategy. i believe at the time it was worth it but i would not have announced this big drawdown. now they're going to basically position themselves. >> mitt romney did not rush to the microphones on this one. he simply released a written statement. "president obama's astonishing failure to secure an orderly transition in iraq has unnecessarily put at risk the victories that were won through the blood and sacrifice of thousands of american men and women. the unavoidable question is whether this decision is the result of a naked political calculation or simply sheer ineptitude in negotiations with the iraqi government. the american people deserve to hear the recommendations that were made by our military." rick perry, wisely, avoided speaking about iraq or taking questions and followed the romney example of releasing a

written statement. "i'm deeply concerned that president obama is putting political expediency ahead of sound military and security judgment by announcing an end to troop level negotiations and a withdrawal from iraq by year's end. the president was slow to engage the iraqis and there's little evidence today's decision is based on advice from military commanders." senator john mccain, the last republican nominee for president who has never had a plan for ending the war in iraq, also released a written statement. "i respectfully disagree with the president. this decision will be viewed as a strategic victory for our enemies in the middle east, especially the iranian regime which has worked relentlessly to ensure a full withdrawal of u.s. troops from iraq. i am confident that no u.s. commander of any stature who has served in iraq recommended the course of action that has now been taken." joining me now, rachel maddow, the host of "the rachel maddow

show" on msnbc and andrea mitchell, nbc chief foreign affairs correspondent and host of msnbc's "andrea mitchell reports." thank you both for joining me. >> hi, lawrence, thank you. >> my pleasure. >> you have both been to iraq. you're our senior advisers at msnbc on this subject. rachel, your reaction to today's events and how quickly it became political. >> lawrence, i think you're absolutely right to point out this was the withdrawal agreement that was agreed to by george w. bush. it was a noncontroversy that i didn't quite understand at the time at the very end of the bush/cheney administration, that they associated this deal with the iraqi government in a way the iraqi government had to take it to its parliament, but the american legislature, the american congress was never consulted. this was just signed unilaterally by george w. bush. this was the deal we would have to be out by 2011. president obama certainly could have sought changes in that deal, but to go along with ending it on the george w. bush timeline, at this point, i think

felt, feels like the right way for president obama to have made good on his promise as a candidate and the early promises he made as a president about what he was going to do here. it also, i think, calls the republicans out in terms of whether or not they support policies on the basis of who they think they can attribute them to or whether they support policies on the basis of their merits. if they were bothered by this, they should have complained when george w. bush signed it. >> andrea, what is the news today? in a sense, the president stood up and said, you know that thing president bush said we were going to do and i always said we should do, i'm doing it. that's kind of what happened today, isn't it? >> the strange thing is, the term of art, believe it or not, is called a s.o.f.a. a status of forces agreement. it was agreed to as rachel just pointed out, as you reported by george w. bush and the iraqi government. if you believe that the whole point of this exercise was to

have elections, to have an independent iraq led by a reliable, credible authoritative government, you have to give them the ability to be a government. and this is what they want. and if that's the case, and if they're not going to give immunity to our soldiers, legal protection, we need to leave. and we need to leave when we said we were going to leave. that was the commitment of the prior administration. >> rachel, you know we're in the thick of a presidential campaign when the president makes a foreign policy and military announcement like this today. and then his re-election campaign office has to issue a reply to mitt romney. i want to read you the campaign, the obama campaign's rely to mitt romney's statement. "mitt romney didn't lay out a plan to end the war in iraq. his foreign policy agenda. he barely even mentioned iraq, but he is apparently willing to leave american troops there without identifying a new mission. mitt romney's foreign policy experience is limited to his

work as a finance executive shipping american jobs overseas." rachel, that's not a preview of what's going to happen in the presidential campaign. that is what's happening in the presidential campaign. >> the presidential contenders on the republican side collectively have no foreign policy experience at all other than jon huntsman's experience both in business and working for barack obama as this nation's ambassador to china. so foreign policy is not a strong suit of the republican candidates. it will be really interesting to watch if they try to carry on a foreign policy critique into further discussions with one another who's going to be the republican nominee. they've avoided it like the plague, avoiding the ten-year anniversary of the afghanistan war, avoiding this issue, the issue of the iraq today until they were absolutely forced to do it. you're right to point out it's a written statement from romney and perry and both will avoid taking questions on the issue because this is not their

wheelhouse, not their strong suit. it is a reminder, you see the statement from the obama campaign, what an emotional part of the democratic nominating process in 2008 it was to be talking about the error that was the iraq war. this is a big part of why we got a democratic congress in 2006 and why we got a democrat congress and president in 2008 because the country was so against this war. it's still a very emotional issue for democrats. i think for most americans, even as the republicans mostly want to avoid it. >> there's one republican candidate for president who's never afraid of the microphone. ron paul. we're going to listen to what he has to say. this is not in direct response to the president's announcement about iraq. it was more a matter of him responding to the events in libya yesterday. let's listen to ron paul. >> he, of course, has been able to come up with this idea that the more dictators he kills and brags about, the more he undermines the republicans.

they think that's a republican issue. he's trying to out the republican issues. i find that rather disgusting. >> andrea, i just wish we had a republican foreign policy debate, foreign policy only, coming up next week to see how they would all assemble themselves around the news of this week. from libya to iraq. where do you think the republican presidential candidates will be going as the campaign progresses in these subjects? >> you've had both romney and huntsman making speeches on the subject and frankly they didn't answer all of the questions that people have because they were in conflict. at least romney's statements have been in conflict. somewhat ambiguous to his debate answers on the withdrawal pace where he suggested the president's withdrawal pace would be too precipitous and based on i don't know what evidence saying we should be ending the war and focusing on home. so there have been differing statements from the various

republicans along the way. i think one of the things that rachel was pointing out was that barack obama became the nominee of the democratic party precisely because as a senator in 2002, he opposed a war that hillary clinton voted for. and if that had not happened, he might not have trounced her in iowa. and that then led to, yes, he fell behind in new hampshire, but it set in motion the possibility of him then achieving the nomination. so his whole stance on iraq was exactly the right stance for the democratic nomination process and now i think it's even more so where the country is because of where independents and even many republicans are given our economic crisis here at home. so i think that the republicans are going to regret, i think, some of these statements down the road when they get into the general election depending on who the nominee is. >> i want to draw on both of your experiences in iraq to respond to lindsay graham, who's not a presidential candidate, but he did release a written

statement today about this saying "i respectfully disagree with president obama. i feel all we have worked for, fought for and sacrificed for is very much in jeopardy by today's announcement. i hope i am wrong and the president is right, but i fear this decision has set in motion events that will come back to haunt our country." rachel, what do you think iraq is going to look like next year after the american troops are gone? >> i think iraq next year is likely to look a lot like what it looks like right now which is a moderately stable country with a lot of internal trouble and a lot of pressure from iran. i think that was set in motion when we toppled saddam, who was a counterweight to iran and the other awful things he was and iraq is going to be a country that doesn't know much what to do with its kurdish north or do with the iranian allegiance in the south, that has a sunni minority used to being in power and unsure of itself with regard

to its sectarian neighbors in its own country. that's what's been the truth of iraq since we toppled saddam. without replacing saddam with a war lord type strong man, that was always going to be iraq's future. i don't know what lindsey graham thinks that having 3,000 american trainers in iraq would change about that. i don't know what having a longer war in iraq would change about that future. when we decided to change iraq's leadership for them, we set in motion iraq's future. and that's been true ever since we toppled saddam which we did very, very early on in 2003. extending this war to year 10, year 11, year 12, year 13. it's one thing to talk about what that would cost us in terms of what we can't do in america because of that and what it would do to the military because we're asking to do that much more. think clearly whether or not that would make a difference in iraq's future. i think it's preposterous to think it would. >> andrea, what do you think iraq is going to look like next

year? and when are you going back? >> i don't know when i'm going back. i'd like to go back soon as a matter of fact. i want to point out that we have 7,000 to 8,000 people now at that embassy, the giant embassy, the biggest embassy that america has anywhere in the world. it looks like a prison, frankly, a fortress. and of those 1,700 foreign service officer, the rest are contractors. there are going to be something upwards of 30,000 american contractors, many of them with diplomatic immunity because they're attached to the embassy. a lot of intelligence officials as well. we're going to be helping them with future military sales including we're told today possibly 5-16s to rebuild the air force that we destroyed back in 2003 during that shock and awe, which, of course, was the term for the initial days of the war when we eliminated their entire air force. so we're going to be spending a lot of money there as well. and helping them. but i fear that one of the problems is the pressure from iran, you have muqtada al sadr,

the iranian proxy who really was the key element in blocking the extension of this in the parliament. and his forces. and you have kurdish terrorists in the north who are pursuing terror against turkey. there are a lot of sectional problems and our colleague richard engel fears there could be civil war. >> andrea mitchell, rachel maddow "the last word" senior advisers on iraq. thank you for joining me tonight. >> thanks, lawrence. >> you bet. coming up, the 9-9-9 plan has just become the 9-0-9 plan and maybe the 3-3-3 plan. as herman cain starts adding exemptions and deductions and, you know, complications to his wicked simple tax plan which turns out like all tax plans to be not so simple. and where would marco rubio's political career be today if he had always told the truth about how his parents came to this country? r voice ] establish connection. give me voice control.

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herman cain says you can abolish the irs if you enact his 9-9-9 plan because his plan is so simple. now he's adding complications only the irs could enforce. robert reich will join me to discuss the problems with the cain plan and the fantasy in all republican flat tax proposals. and following up on a point made by andrea mitchell in our first segment, how many lives could have been saved in iraq if barack obama had a louder microphone back in 2002? ♪ [ sighs ] [ bird chirps ] [ bird squawks ] ♪

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we wanted it to be fair. not according to washington's definition of fair. but wealth's definition of fair, which means everybody gets treated the same. that's fair. >> but then herman cain spent the day explaining how everyone doesn't get treated the same. how some individual taxpayers would be treated differently and how some businesses would be treated differently in the tax code in the herman cain tax code. kind of like the way the tax code is now tailored to the different circumstances of different taxpayers. herman cain's keep it simple plan of taxation is already starting to develop some complications. >> if you are at or below the poverty level, your plan isn't 9-9-9, it's 9-0-9. say amen, you all. 9-0-9.

in other words, if you are at or below the poverty level based upon family size because there's a different number for each one, then you don't pay that middle 9 tax on your income. this is how we help the poor. >> so now not everyone will have a 9% income tax rate as previously advertised. now a family of four making $22,000 a year or less would have a 0% federal income tax rate under herman cain's plan which happens to be exactly what their income tax rate is right now. which herman cain obviously does not know. but that family of four with an income of $22,000 a year or less also received an earned income tax credit worth thousands of dollars which herman cain would take away from them. he would take that money right out of the working poor's pockets so that rich people can pay much, much lower taxes. having ripped that money out of the poor's pockets, herman cain

would then take more money away from them on every dollar they spend. the herman cain tax would take 9 cents of every spent dollar because the working poor spend all of their income. herman cain would through his sales tax be hitting them with a 9% federal tax on all of their income. that currently does not exist. herman cain thinks he's come up with another idea that will help the poor which involves a serious complication to the first 9 of his 9-9-9 plan. the 9% business tax. >> right now on the first 9, you can deduct purchases if you're a business, capital expenditures, net exports. but for those cities that qualify as opportunity zones, you will also be able to deduct a certain amount of your payroll expenses. so you will be incented to put

people to work. it just doesn't apply to certain kinds of businesses located in the zone. all businesses would qualify for those kinds of extra exemptions. >> and there's the magic word, "exemption." herman cain is now writing exemptions and complications into the 9-9-9 very simple plan. businesses would pay different tax rates depending on where they located. businesses would be allowed different deductions depending on where they located. that has been written into the tax code for years, called at various times enterprise stozon or empowerment zones. what herman cain is discovering is taxation is complicated for a very simple reason. making the tax code fair in an extremely complex advanced economy is an extremely complex exercise. of course, there should be

different tax rates for poor people. and of course there should be different tax rates for rich people. and yet a different tax rate for middle class people and there should be reasonably conceived deductions and exemptions in personal income taxation and there must be full tax deductibility for reasonable business expenses for business to even be able to define profit. never mind make a profit. herman cain's tax plan does not allow businesses to deduct their single biggest expense. salaries. payroll expenses. you cannot calculate the profit of a business without accounting for the biggest expense in a business. herman cain would only allow a business to deduct some payroll expenses and we have no idea how much of the payroll expenses, but some payroll expenses if and

only if the business is located in one of his opportunity zones. this is the most anti-business proposal ever made by a major presidential candidate. that it is made by one of the presidential candidates who claims his qualification for the presidency is that he is a businessman strikes a note of absurdity never before heard on a presidential debate stage. all you would have to do to get all republicans including herman cain to recognize the absurdity of everything herman cain is saying about taxes is to simply have a democrat, any democrat, say exact ly the same thing. joining me now is robert reich, former labor secretary in the clinton administration. he's now a professor of public policy at the university of california at berkeley and the author of "aftershock." thank you very much for joining me tonight, bob. >> good evening, lawrence.

>> bob, the reason i keep coming back to the 9-9-9 plan is that it is absurd throughout at every stage it is absurd. but it is a version of an old republican kind of honored republican idea in many circles, the flat tax. and all of these flat tax proposals in the past, in the present, what is surely to be rick perry's flat tax proposal, we're told is coming up, they're all filled with the problems exemplified by herman cain's 9-9-9 plan. aren't they? >> well, they are all fraudulent. i mean, the flat tax is a fraud. let's be very clear about this. on two grounds. one ground, you've already talked about, lawrence, and that is that innestingevitably there going to be exemptions and deductions because life is complicated, people are complicated, businesses are complicated and to get fairness you're going to have to have them. secondly, if you have a flat tax, you're inevitably going to reduce the taxes of people at

the top who in the progressive tax system are supposed to pay a little bit more and you're going to increase the taxes of people at the bottom who either pay no tax now or pay a very little tax or get some sort of exemption. no, they would be pays 9% or whatever the flat tax rate is. this is known. i mean, the independent nonpartisan center for tax policy recently investigated the cain plan and found poor people would be paying a lot more and rich people would be paying a lot less in taxes. i mean, it is not only absurd, but it's been over and over again being utilized by republicans, rick perry is going to come out with his flat tax plan next week. it's been utilized by republicans to disguise what's really going on which is a transfer of income and wealth to the very top. exactly what we've seen going on in america for years. >> and no republican in the presidential campaign has a problem with that. the only problem they have is, hey, herman, we don't want a new 9% sales tax but none of them

are going after the flat tax income tax portion of it because that's something actually if they all got a chance to do, they would all be inclined to do. >> oh, of course. of course. you know what i hope democrats begin to say with regard to tax reform is what we really need, given so much income and wealth is now going to the very top 1%, i mean, we have double what he had only 30 years ago. 30 years ago about 10% of total income went to the top 1%. now more than 20% of total income goes to the top 1%. and their income taxes, their tax races, their marginal tax rates, are lower than they've been in 30 years. we have a big debt. i mean, the logic would suggest that we raise taxes on the very top, have more tax brackets and we treat all sorts of income, including capital gains, that's one of the big loopholes. capital gains have been taxed at 15%. we treat all taxes and all capital gains and all sorts of income exactly the same.

that would be real tax reform. >> yeah. i have been an all-income-is-income guy since i've taken my first economic course. why we distinguish capital gains which requires no labor and we in effect honor the earnings of capital through the tax code more than we honor the earnings of labor through our tax code. >> lawrence, it's absurd. the 400 richest families in america the last time the irs measured them, the 400 richest families that actually are sitting on a total wealth that is greater than the total wealth of the bottom 150 million families, and have huge incomes, they're paying at a 17% rate on average. 17%. because of those capital gains. you know, if you start looking at this thing, you see that even the current system is so regressive, it is not progressive. poor people are paying huge shares of their income in social security, payroll taxes and sales taxes. it's unfair.

>> former labor secretary, robert reich. thank you very much for joining me tonight. >> thanks, lawrence. coming up, did marco rubio mislead voters by stretching the truth about his family's journey to the united states from cuba? it's a subject that hits close to home for thousands of cuban-americans and cuban exiles. dane ma mia milbank of the "was post" joins me. later, very few leaders have the courage to stand up before the iraq war before it even began. but one of those who did played a key role, the key role in what is now going to be the end of that war. that's in tonight's "rewrite." the most rewards of any small business credit card. the spark card earns double miles... so we really had to up our game. with spark, the boss earns double miles on every purchase, every day. that's setting the bar pretty high. owning my own business has never been more rewarding. coming through!

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still ahead, president obama understood more about foreign policy and war policy when he was just an illinois legislator than president bush did as commander in chief. that's in tonight's "rewrite." and what did marco rubio know and when did he know it about how his parents came to the united states and what difference does that make to his political career? we're america's natural gas

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oh, hi. which cash back booth looks better to you, chase freedom or the largest cashback card? oh, i'll try the largest. oh, that is too bad. apparently you don't know chase freedom guarantees you 1% cash back. 4 times more than the largest cash back card, which only gives you a quarter percent until you spend $3,000 every year. but have fun. bob and weave once you're in there. don't get short changed. get your cash back. chase freedom. i was raised by exiles. by people who know what it is like to lose their country. by people who have a unique perspective on why elections matter. or lack thereof. by people who clearly understand how different america is from the rest of the world. and they've taught me this my whole life.

>> that was the story told to many audiences by tea party favorite florida senator marco rubio as he rose to republican political stardom. a new "washington post" report questions the accuracy of rubio's descriptions of his family's history and says that the senator, quote, sometimes embellishes facts. marco rubio's official senate biography says that his parents, "came to america following fidel castro's takeover." fidel castro took power in cuba on january 1st, 1959. the "washington post" reports, however, "multiple documents signed by rubio's parents including their petitions for naturalization show mario and oriales rubio arrived in the united states on may 27th, 1956." that's 2 1/2s years earlier than the senator's biography indicate his parents came to the united states. rubio shot back in an article today in "politico" saying, "i

now know they entered the u.s. legally in 19s 56. the post story misses the entire point about my family and why their story is relevant. people didn't vote for me because they thought my parents came in 1961 or 1956, any other year. i'm the son of exiles. i inherited two generations of unfulfilled dreams. this is a story that needs no embellishing." joining me now, "washington post" columnist dana milbank. thanks for joining me. >> good evening, lawrence. >> rubio on sean hannity's show at least one said his parents came, as he put it at the time p 1958 or 1959. he wasn't trying to specify a particular year. certainly things were very bad in cuba in 1956. the revolution was under way. the guns were firing. it was a place to flee from just as it was for other, for reasons

when castro took power. what is the big deal here? >> well, on the one hand, it's not, and it doesn't really matter whether he knew when his parents came or whether he didn't know when his parents came. but the core political problem here is that this is the very basis of marco rubio's political narrative. the whole idea is his parents, as he said on multiple occasions, fled castro's cuba and that is why he and the tea party are opposed to big government here in the united states. that's the core narrative here. so whether he was misled by his parents or simply didn't understand, or whether he miss led people, that's not so much the issue. the issue is that there's really a flaw in the whole story here. there's nothing wrong with his parents coming in 1956. there was nothing wrong with, you know, leaving germany in 1931 but you were not fleeing hitler's germany at that time. people have gotten in a lot of

trouble for a lot less than this. you know, just think of al gore and love story and al gore and internet. those things destroyed the man. this is much more close to marco rubio's core. >> well, democrats seem to get in trouble for those kinds of things, but republicans don't. it's hard for me to imagine a republican voter thinking that anything has really changed in their view of marco rubio as a result of this information. and i think the more the media tries to bash him with it, the more republican voters will rise in his defense. that's the pattern we've seen with michele bachmann and others. >> i think that's right, lawrence. and i don't think this is a political problem for marco rubio in florida. they would have voted for him regardless of the year his parents came here. where it is a problem, you hear his name as much as anybody with the possible exception of chris christie as the likeliest vice presidential nominee. i think this is going to give people pause here. there's a sense that marco rubio just wasn't vetted. you know, that because of the way the race shaped up with

christie -- they should have uncovered this in the first place. i think this is going to gi a lot of republican operatives pause and say, what else don't we know about this man? what might not add up here before they decide to put this young man on the ticket? >> yeah, my sense is it's going to have to be something else. this thing, when you think about jews fleeing europe before world war ii, you know, there's a period of years in which people can feel these things coming. they could feel hitler coming. they could feel castro coming. and it seems to me it's all one exile migration that's going on without a specific date that makes it, you know, something that fits this story or not. >> in a sense, yes. and he often says, i was raised in a community of exiles, which is certainly accurate. now, sometimes he says his parents are exiles, not necessarily clear. but at any rate, they were economic immigrants and there's nothing wrong with that. >> "washington post" columnist dana milbank. thank you very much for joining me tonight. >> thanks, lawrence.

in a 2002 anti-war speech in chicago, then-state senator barack obama said he wasn't against all wars, just dumb wars. earlier today that former state senator, president obama, announced his plan to end what he used to call a dumb war. that's next in the "rewrite." later, we'll review the week in comedy with the best of the late night comedians. l sleep when it's done" academic. for 80 years, we've been inspired by you. and we've been honored to walk with you to help you get where you want to be. ♪ because your moment is now. let nothing stand in your way. learn more at keller.edu. let nothing stand in your way. fresher less processed foods introducing freshpet recipes so fresh

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coming up, a once ignorable early critic of george w. bush's iraq war turned out to be the man who would have to end that war. that's in tonight's "rewrite." and the republican debate as usual turns into late night comedy gold. i trade on tradearchitect. this is web-based trading, re-visualized. streaming, real-time quotes. earnings analysis. probability analysis: that's what opportunity looks like. it's all visual. intuitive. and it's available free, wherever the web is.

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time for tobts tonight's rewrite. in the fall of 2002 when the bush administration was moving public we toward war with iraq, a worried country mostly watched and waited. some objected. some marched. some protested. in an anti-war rally october 2nd, 2002, at federal plaza in downtown chicago, an illinois state senator not known outside of his chicago district addressed the crowd. anyone who saw this as politically opportunistic at that time should be forgiven. it is routine for state and local politicians to make big speeches about matters of federal governance over which they have no control and will never have any responsibility. there is nothing easier for a

state senator or mayor or still councillor to do than to object to what the president of the united states plans to. this is what the 41-year-old state senator said in his fifth year on the job, a job that had nothing to do with war making. >> i don't oppose war in all circumstances, and when i look out over this crowd today, i know there is no shortage of patriots or patriotism. what i do oppose is a dumb war. >> needless to say, president bush didn't hear that speech that day. none of us who were not at federal plaza heard that speech. five months later, the president made this announcement. >> my fellow citizens, at this hour, american and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave

danger. >> and then only six weeks later, the president made this speech. >> in this battle we have fought for the cause of liberty and for the peace of the world. our nation and our coalition are proud of this accomplishment. yet it is you, the members of the united states military who achieved it. your courage, your willingness to face danger for your country and for each other, made this day possible. because of you, our nation is more secure, because of you the tyrant has fallen and iraq is free. >> by the time the president gave that mission accomplished speech, the state senator opposed to dumb wars was running for the united states senate from illinois. his opposition to dumb wars

sounded ever wiser as american soldiers continued to fight and die in iraq long after the president had told us that was a mission accomplished. and in a turn of history previously imaginable only in fiction, it would fall to the then ignorable state senator who was opposed to dumb wars to end the war. he opposed. to rewrite the ending of that war that his predecessor falsely proclaimed under a mission accomplished banner eight years earlier. >> good afternoon, everybody. as a candidate for president, i pledged to bring the war in iraq to a responsible end. for the sake of our national security. as commander in chief, ensuring the success of this strategy has been one of my highest national security priorities. so today i can report that as

promised, the rest of our troops in iraq will come home by the end of the year. after nearly nine years, america's war in iraq will be over. the last american soldier will cross the border out of iraq with their heads held high, proud of their success and knowing that the american people stand united in our support for our troops. that is how america's military efforts in iraq will end. so if i didn't know better i'd say you're having some sort of big tire sale. yes we are. yeah. how many tires does ford buy every year? over 3 million. you say you can beat any advertised price on tires? correct. anywhere? yes.

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and "the last word" of the week goes to the late night

comedians. >> during last night's republican debate in las vegas, there was a big clash between herman cain, mitt romney and rick perry. yeah. observers called it the least sexy three-way in the history of las vegas. things got physical last night. did you see this? it got physical at one point. at one point during the debate, mitt romney put his hand on rick perry's shoulder and said, i'm speaking. yeah. yeah. later he put his hand on newt gingrich's chest and said, are those real? >> but enough of the niceties. let's get ready to romney! >> why don't you let me speak -- rick, you had your chance. let me speak. you got it from the heritage foundation and from you. >> you just said it's not true. it's in your book. it should be your everywhere. >> you took it out of your book. >> you took it out of your book. >> the big states of -- >> do you see that woman's look of shock? do you know how hard it is to get a look of shock from someone

in las vegas? it's las vegas. you know what they call a show girl [ bleep ] penguin in las vegas? tuesday. >> libyan leader moammar gadhafi is dead. that's the big story. huge. even more shocking, did you hear this, he was killed by an escaped tiger from ohio. >> here's how it went down. >> libyan officials are saying that gadhafi was hiding in some sort of hole. >> now, if you recall, they pulled saddam out of a hole. evidently, totalitarian dictators are a nocturnal burrowing species. who can forget the time jack hanna brought kim jong-il on leno? nation, i say we need to stay vigilant here. gadhafi with a "g" may be gone, but we still have not captured

quadafi, qatdafi. >> today's administration reacted with relief and amazement. for one group, the death of gadhafi the dictator and major sponsor of international terrorism would require more reflection. time to process. time to figure out how this good news could actually be bad? >> it's too soon to tell. as far as what this means for libya. i think, again, we don't know what these rebels are going to do in libya after they take over. there's a lot of questions. >> if it turns out to be a radical islamist regime or one that harbors international terrorists, we will actually have taken a step backward. >> are we really sure about getting rid of gadhafi? who knows. the next guy that comes in could be crazy. >> the late night comedians get "the last word." have the last word on line at the