While I'm away from the blog this week, I'm posting some cartoons I drew exactly five years ago, when the Iraq war was in its infancy, so you can see how the world has changed or not changed in the meantime. I thought the exercise in armchair quarterbacking might be informative.

This cartoon made me saddest of all when I dug it up. Since the war began, we have been appalled that a nation as great as ours could treat its returning warriors so shabbily, and that our priorities could be so misplaced.

When it was first published, I got some angry comments from vets who felt the VA was doing its job beautifully, and how dare I cast any aspersions upon it. But that was five years ago.

It seemed appropriate to run again on Memorial Day.

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While I'm away from the blog this week, I'm posting some cartoons I drew exactly five years ago, when the Iraq war was in its infancy, so you can see how the world has changed or not changed in the meantime. I thought the exercise in armchair quarterbacking might be informative.

This was drawn back when a majority of Americans still felt we had done the right thing to invade. Bush still had stratospheric approval ratings, but we were beginning to wonder what happened to the stated excuse for the war, that being the weapons of mass destruction.

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While I'm away from the blog this week, I'm posting some cartoons I drew exactly five years ago, when the Iraq war was in its infancy, so you can see how the world has changed or not changed in the meantime. I thought the exercise in armchair quarterbacking might be informative.

We used to have a symphony orchestra here, the Florida Philharmonic. It died of slow financial strangulation. Here's the reason why: lack of creative marketing.

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While I'm away from the blog this week, I'm posting some cartoons I drew exactly five years ago, when the Iraq war was in its infancy, so you can see how the world has changed or not changed in the meantime. I thought the exercise in armchair quarterbacking might be informative.

Remember SARS? Here's one that will really date you: Remember SWINE FLU?

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While I'm away from the blog this week, I'm posting some cartoons I drew exactly five years ago, when the Iraq war was in its infancy, so you can see how the world has changed or not changed in the meantime. I thought the exercise in armchair quarterbacking might be informative.

Occasionally, when an editorial about the Middle East is called for, someone on the editorial board half-jokingly (and somewhat sadly) suggests that we simply pull out an old editorial, dust it off, and re-run it, because nothing ever seems to change. This cartoon could have run last week and still have been current.

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While I'm away from the blog this week, I'm posting some cartoons I drew exactly five years ago, when the Iraq war was in its infancy, so you can see how the world has changed or not changed in the meantime. I thought the exercise in armchair quarterbacking might be informative.

Remember when we thought the war was being fought for oil, or at least that the Iraqis could repay the costs of the conflict and reconstruction with oil revenues? Now that we're pushing four-dollar-a-gallon gas, all I can say is, "Boy, were WE wrong!"

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This ran March 23, 2003, four days after Operation Iraqi Freedom began. It seemed like a nutty policy then to pass a tax cut with a war just starting. It appears even nuttier now that we know the actual cost after five years. But since the whole thing is being conducted off the books, why worry?

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We ran this cartoon on March 23, 2003, four days after the invasion of Iraq began. Stock prices soared in a patriotic wave of irrational exuberance...many felt the war would be short and sweet. "Mission Accomplished" was yet to come.

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