said in his State of the Union address that he would "not set an artificial timetable." for leaving.

"We don't have an exit strategy, we have a victory strategy," then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told group of soldiers a few months later.

That same year, Vice President Dick Cheney argued that the Iraq insurgency was in its "last throes." Two years after that remark, another 1,799 U.S. soldiers had died in the Iraq war.