Today marks the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces.

In recent days, the architects of that invasion worked to solidify a noxious lie as the historical narrative of the events before and after March 19, 2003. Our new president, thanks be to God, declared his intention to remove our forces from Iraq. But as we move toward the exit, we also move toward the pen and paper to write the final account of what transpired. Six years after the invasion, it is incumbent upon us to remember, to face the truth of the Iraq war and what it says about us, without shrinking, because what chose to remember determines our reality. Those who decided that their ends were more important than the lives lost in the pursuit of those ends, having failed to succeed in the moment, want to make real their lies and their phantoms and their fantasies in the only place where reality lives once the moment passes–in our memory.

So tonight, six years later, we remember.

We remember that we were terrorized by our leaders with visions of nuclear explosions over our cities. We remember these old Cold Warriors, digging deep into the paranoia burned into us during a chess match for all the marbles–for the end of marbles in fiery flashes–dredging up visions of our loved ones vaporized if they were lucky, dying like the walking, agonized Hiroshima dead if they were unlucky. We remember that choking sense of urgency, that horrible, cloying, suffocating terror, urged on by towers falling over and over in T.V. screens, internet video, and Vice Presidential brimstone speeches. We remember terror plays manufactured in “intelligence” reports, visions of strange, dark-skinned men from Saudi Arabia, meeting in secret with strange, dark-skinned men from Iraq, trading secrets, trading weapons, plotting, planning.

We remember a president stating without caveat that Iraq “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons” and insinuating that Iraq would use unmanned aerial vehicles to attack the United States.

We remember lines drawn from New York City, to Afghanistan, to Iraq. “The danger is clear: Using chemical, biological, or, one day, nuclear weapons obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country,” he said.

We remember being lied to at least 935 times.

We remember America’s once-favored son, Colin Powell, jangling that cute little test tube in front of the United Nations, rattling our nightmares. I remember my Latin: corruptio optimi pessima.

We remember our elected leaders of both parties, many of whom still sit in privileged positions, “representing” us, failing, folding, selling us out. We remember an old senator, standing in the well of the Senate, shouting at empty chairs for someone to listen to him. We remember silence in return.

We remember Paul Wellstone.

We remember hearing that our loved ones were being called up for duty and that they couldn’t tell us where they were going.

We remember millions of people marching in the streets around the world to say, “No!” We remember weapons inspectors telling us the weapons–which we sold them!–were gone, likely destroyed by years of bombing.

We remember being force-fed yellow cake.

We remember a vindictive, murderous cluster of men pulling off the mask of a CIA operative in retaliation for truth telling.

We remember you, Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson.

We remember imperious demands from imperial mouthpieces.

We remember “the hour of our choosing,” that awful moment when the bombs began to fall.

Some of us remember refusing to “shut up and sing.”

We remember being marginalized, shouted at, berated, hated, tarred as terrorist sympathizers, traitors, cowards. We remember bumper stickers that said “Real men go to Tehran,” even though a million people in Tehran went to the streets to pray for the 9-11 dead. We remember the long, hard, thankless work of speaking truth in the face of a collective agreement to believe a lie. And we’re not ready to make nice.

We remember you too, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. We remember the news networks colluding with Pentagon puppets. Don’t you think we forgot, not for a second.

We remember Amiriya. I can’t remember what the weapon-pushers said about how smart their bombs were.

We remember Christ changed your heart, but you forgot to ask him to guide your hands. We remember a president being guided by a false and bloody idol to smite Saddam Hussein. We remember that the battle-god promotes peace, however.

We remember Fallujah. (I remember a little boy I knew when I was a kid, who died as a man defending a house he didn’t care about.)

We remember “Mission Accomplished.”

We remember utter mendacity : “[W]e’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th.” Fuck you, Mr. President. That’s not what you led us to believe–I remember.

We remember Abu Ghraib.

(Where did those collars come from? Who gave the orders? Which commanding officers allowed (or ordered) this to happen? No one seems to remember.)

We remember some people make a lot of money off the killing of a lot of people.

We remember troops being given Vietnam-era body armor and vehicles that popped like balloons when they hit IEDs. We remember a small, squinting man and “going to war with the Army you have.”

We remember ethnic cleansing we didn’t stop. We remember planting a flag on the pile of bodies and declaring the silence of the grave, “peace.”

We remember 4259 dead troops.

We remember 30,182 injured Americans.

We remember 2,100 troops who tried to kill themselves in 2007 alone.

We remember between 90,000 and 1 million dead Iraqi civilians. We are sorry.

We remember that the war still goes on, and that it won’t be over until the last American troop leaves Iraq.

It’s six years later.  The histories of this long, bad dream will soon be committed to textbooks and dissertations. We’ll pick and choose what to include and what to leave out. All we’ll have is our memory, what we chose to commit to paper and collective recollection. The Dick Cheneys of the world will want to guide the hands of the historian from under the well-appointed rocks where they now reside. So we must choose to remember all this and more; every dot and stroke of it, every single lie, every jingoistic throwaway line to silence opposition. But more than all of these, we must remember with unforgiving honesty the most awful truth of the last six years: that they were our six years, and we let them happen. Piling all of this on a president and a vice president won’t do. Remember, we are a democracy. In some fundamental way, we consented. And then we reelected them.

Tomorrow starts Year Seven. Tomorrow morning, remember not to be taken in by a friendly affect and an easy smile, no matter the party affiliation. Remember–those that cheered a war of aggression in Iraq, who spit vitriol at you for wanting to stop it, now want to guide U.S. policy in Afghanistan. Remember that we’re still busily garrisoning the planet and that our arms sales roughly equaled the foreign aid budget in 2007. Remember that despite a new president’s best intentions, the war won’t end unless we force our leaders to keep their word and bring the troops home.

Remember: we still have a job to do.

(Cross-posted from Daily Kos.)