Today, Arianna Huffington reviewed the long history of shifting rationalizations for having a huge U.S. military occupation of Iraq:

The White House served up a blast from the past this week with word that it was planning to rebrand the Iraq war — something the Bushies did quite often. Come Sept. 1, it will be good-bye “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” hello “Operation New Dawn”! This New Dawn will, incidentally, still see 50,000 U.S. troops left in Iraq. So we started with 2001’s “Gathering Threat” and 2002’s “Axis of Evil,” moved to 2003’s “Shock and Awe” and “Mission Accomplished,” then pinballed from “Fight ’em There, Not Here” (’04) to “Last Throes” (’05) to “Stay the Course” (’05) to “The New Way Forward” (’06). “Operation New Dawn” sounds like “A New Way of Forgetting This Ever Happened.” It’s time to brand the war what it always was — “A Huge, Tragic Mistake” — and get the hell out.