This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, May 8th, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

It's now five years since mission accomplished and the official end of combat operations in Iraq.

Stanley Cobur, a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute,

draws out a few parallels.

At the time, they really thought they won. I have sometimes compared this to Napoleon's

invasion of Russia. It is very similar. He invades Russia, makes it to Moscow.

Sara doesn't surrender.

You know, it says, I'm supposed to surrender.

Nope, nothing happens.

I'll make you a good deal, okay? Surrender. Nope, nothing happens. I'll make you a good deal, okay?

Surrender. Nothing happens.

Yeah, people burn the city.

He doesn't look as if it's the war he expected.

Didn't then so well.

Hopefully, it won't be the same way.

I mean, that was really bad.

But, uh, uh, the same way and that was that was really bad but I was at a meeting about a few days ago and

you know Paul Wolfowitz was saying you know something along the lines of who could have expected this kind of an

insurgency.

They just didn't see this coming.

Now you draw out a lot of parallels between our experience here five years later and our experience five years before the US left Vietnam and that was a I suppose a

consistent chorus of we're turning a corner don't you sort of have to say those things when you're involved in a war,

...