What about Bush's alleged ineptitude and use of illegal procedures in prosecuting the war?

The President-elect's transition team suggests that Obama might keep Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a proponent of the Bush surge strategy -- a strategy that Obama criticized and predicted would make things worse. That didn't happen. The surge and the change in counterinsurgency strategy successfully brought about long-awaited Iraqi political reconciliation, along with a dramatic reduction in American casualties. And Iraq and America appear ready to finalize a deal to have all the troops out by the end of 2011. Yes, it is a fixed -- reportedly not conditions-based -- timetable, but a timetable that, pre-surge, was unthinkable.

According to Siobhan Gorman, writing in The Wall Street Journal: "President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies, advisers say, an approach that is almost certain to create tension within the Democratic Party. … (Obama) recently voted for a White House-backed law to expand eavesdropping powers for the National Security Agency. … The new president could take a similar approach to revising the rules for CIA interrogations, said one current government official familiar with the transition. Upon review, Mr. Obama may decide he wants to keep the road open in certain cases for the CIA to use techniques not approved by the military, but with much greater oversight."

So was the Iraq war, as Obama insisted, a mission that "never should have been authorized and never should have been waged"?

A Rasmussen poll released a week ago finds voter confidence in the War on Terror at 60 percent -- its "highest level ever." As for Iraq, 42 percent of voters say that, long term, the mission will be judged a success, with 34 percent believing history will judge it a failure (down from 54 percent in March). At the war's beginning, President Bush said when the Iraqi government and military can stand up, we will stand down. Victory, he said, will be achieved when the country can defend itself against its enemies, foreign and domestic, and has established a democratic government in the region that will serve as a reliable ally in the War on Terror.

Mission accomplished?