Five years, nearly 4,000 dead Americans, millions of killed or displaced Iraqi civilians and $500 billion later, George W. Bush still thinks the Iraq war was a good move. In remarks leaked on the eve of his speech marking the anniversary of the war, the president says the high costs “are necessary when we consider the cost of a strategic victory for our enemies in Iraq.”

His words once again betray his strategic incompetence. “This is a fight America can and must win,” the president will say. Of course, he can’t explain what victory is, outside of some vague notion of stability, some incoherent sense that America has weakened the morale of terrorists by restoring order to a country it degraded.

But we’ve heard this argument already, and perhaps that is what is so sad. We don’t expect Bush to take responsibility for the worst foreign policy disaster in American history. But at the very least, if he can’t think of something new to say, if he can’t come even an inch closer to reality, then on this miserable anniversary the least he could do is say nothing at all.