OLBERMANN: "I assure you this will not be a campaign of half measures," the words of George Walker Bush exactly five years ago tonight as he plunged America into a war that to date has caused 3,991 American soldiers their lives, cost four and a half million Iraqis their homes, cost the American tax payer 526 billion dollars, with hundreds of billions more already unavoidable.

Yet, in our third story in the COUNTDOWN, the president still declared this morning, with a straight face, that, quote, the successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable.

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BUSH: The surge is working and as a return on our success in Iraq, we've begun bringing some of our troops home.

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OLBERMANN: Of course, those troops were part of the escalation and due to be rotated home anyway. The president just slipped in this week that there are no more troops due to return after July; 140,000 American soldiers will still remain in Iraq, more than before that surge began. As to local citizens, --

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BUSH: Today, there are more than 90,000 concerned local citizens who are protecting their communities from the terrorists and insurgents and extremists.

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OLBERMANN: According to reporting done by "Rolling Stone Magazine," those concerned citizens are actually former Sunni insurgents, who have now given their loyalty to the American military in return for cash. Such newly formed militias are acting as a counter-force to the predominately Shiite Iraqi security forces. So, we have now armed both sides of the sectarian divide.

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BUSH: For the terrorists, Iraq was supposed to be a place where al Qaeda rallied the Arab masses to drive America out. Instead, Iraq has become the place where Arabs join with Americans to drive al Qaeda out. In Iraq, we're witnessing the first large scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden.

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OLBERMANN: So our half assed invasion of Iraq, which allowed a bunch of terrorists to flood the country and buy the local terrorism franchise, was actually genius, because it's apparently yielded a popular uprising against bin Laden, an uprising that America is funding, an uprising that's so fundamental that the president thinks it's incapable of surviving if American troops go home.

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BUSH: Al Qaeda would regain its lost sanctuaries and establish new ones, fomenting violence and terror that could spread beyond Iraq's borders with serious consequences for the world's economy.

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OLBERMANN: The economy? So, we've been in Iraq to disarm Saddam, to find WMD, to change regime, to liberate the Iraqi people, to bring democracy to the Middle East, to stop al Qaeda, to protect American, to stop Iran. Now it's the economy, stupid!

Finally, if you were in any doubt as to the administration's opinion of the war and of your opinion about it, witness the vice president's interview with ABC's Martha Raddatz.

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CHENEY: I'm on the security front, I think there's a general consensus that we've made major progress, that the surge has worked. That's been a major success.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Two thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting.

CHENEY: So.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So? You don't care what the American people think?

CHENEY: No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuation of the opinion polls.

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OLBERMANN: He doesn't care what people think. Speaking of being blown off course, he spent the fifth year of the war he engineered fishing from a yacht belonging to the sultan of Oman.

We're joined now by Jon Soltz, chairman of Vote Vets.org. Good to see you in person, Jon.

JON SOLTZ, VOTVETS.ORG: Thanks for having me.

OLBERMANN: What's worse, the vice president's indifference or the president's on-going delusion and effort to sell the war as a success of any kind?

SOLTZ: I have to tell you, I think they are both equally horrible statements. When it comes to the president trying to sell the war, make no mistake, five years ago, when we were sitting in the Kuwaiti desert, we were going into Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. I was for it. I believe it. I wanted to go. I was happy be there.

It was a hard thing when you come home and find out that's not true. I think back to one instance I had when I talked to one of my guys. He was blown up. They had taken bones out of his rib to reconstruct his arm. I think it was the only time in my life I really cried in front of a soldier.

I asked myself a simple question and I said it to him. I said, I hope that this is worth it. To see him today, continually trying to sell a war when he has a policy of retreat against Osama bin Laden, it's hard for me.

When I hear the vice president talk about so, well, the military overall feels just like the American public, in regards to the percentage of us that don't support this policy in Iraq. Not just that he has complete disregard for us, but we have great military men and women who serve as recruiters in our military. They have the hardest job in the Army.

They go into homes and they ask mothers and fathers to give their sons to the armed forces. It's the first time ever we have put up a volunteer force in this protracted war. How are they going to recruit when the people don't support the war policy? We can never mobilize for war. Both statements are horrible.

OLBERMANN: When he says that and he shows contempt, it's not just for the American public, it's for the soldiers as well.

SOLTZ: Absolutely and for the people out there trying to recruit people to the military every day.

OLBERMANN: The president is still conflating the reasons for war in Iraq with the hunt for bin Laden. They don't have anything to do with each other. And now, as that happened, today there's a new audio tape, apparently a posted message, from bin Laden that's aimed at Europe and the Pope. That is a stark reminder that whereas this is supposedly all?had something to do originally with finding bin Laden. All it's done has protected bin Laden. This war has protected Osama bin Laden.

SOLTZ: I say it real simple; George Bush and John McCain, who is obviously going to be the Republican nominee, they have our country in a policy of retreat against the people that attacked this country on 9/11. You have 90 percent of your Army in Iraq. You have 10 percent of your force structure in Afghanistan.

Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. It is a policy of retreat. My question is, these bin Laden videos, it's sickening that he's out there, but this is actually a benefit for the opposition party in this country. This is a benefit for the Democrats. The fact that bin Laden is on the lose, that proves that this war in Iraq has been a complete disaster. Here we are five years later, and the man is on the loose.

OLBERMANN: What do you think?One of the last quotes from Bush that we played, "al Qaeda would regain its lost sanctuaries, establish new ones, fomenting violence and terror that could spread beyond Iraq's borders, with serious consequences to the world's economy?" He has now mentioned the world's economy and oil, the price of gas. These have now been used?they were reasons that were thrown out by the lunatic fringe on the left five years ago, saying, this war is about the economy and the price of gas. They were shouted down on the street and called traitors to this country.

Now the president is using this as rationale. What do you think when you hear that?

SOLTZ: I go back to the whole issue of wars sell themselves. You shouldn't have to debate why we're in it. When you look at reasons for this war, the reason for this war was weapons of mass destruction. When we were getting mortared in Baghdad in 2003, it was very clear there was no WMD there. There's been no reason since. He's just had excuses for the last five years to keep us in this mess.

The only reason that we have in Iraq right now is a political strategy and political reason for the president to not have to admit that he made a huge mistake in Iraq.

OLBERMANN: Jon Soltz, chairmen of VoteVets.org. As always, we say it the same way, thanks for your time and thanks for your service.

SOLTZ: Thanks for having me.

OLBERMANN: Jon, be well. Oddly, while the president and vice president made such fools of themselves on this day of remembrance, their poodles said almost nothing. Where are your war pom-poms now, Rush.

And in Worsts, she's very upset that these photos of here helped inflame Iraq, not that she posed in them or took them, not that she was doing the torturing depicted. She's very upset that it's all the media's fault. Worst persons ahead on COUNTDOWN.