On March 22, three days after the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Spc. David Stelmat, a medic from Littleton who went to Iraq to "help people" became what may have been the 4,000th American soldier killed in the war.

Despite President Bush's anniversary boast that the surge of troops into Iraq had brought about success, parts of Iraq are smoldering. Mortar rounds and rockets are landing inside the Green Zone in Baghdad where American diplomats are housed. U.S. and Iraqi forces are engaged in heavy fighting against Shiite militias and gangs in Basra. Protesters fill the streets of Baghdad where fighting, suicide bombers and roadside explosive devices continue to claim lives. More than 200 people have died so far this week.

Despite administration claims, the surge has not succeeded. Its primary purpose was to reduce the violence enough to buy Iraq's unpopular, cobbled together government time to find a way for rival factions to share power and oil revenue. That time was squandered, and now the violence is increasing. If, as many fear, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr lifts the ceasefire that has kept most of his 70,000 militia members on the sidelines, the fighting will escalate drastically. The Iraq people have "been liberated," in the words of the president. They are free to be kidnapped, shot or blown up at home, at work and at play.

None of this squares with the version of reality being spun by President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney. Nothing they say about Iraq is believable. Both men continue to falsely link Saddam Hussein with the al-Qaida terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. Both warn of the danger posed by al-Qaida in Iraq, though the vast majority of those wielding arms have nothing to do with the terrorist group. Neither will admit that al-Qaida was not in Iraq before the American invasion. Both claim that the war in Iraq has made America and the world safer from terrorism, yet the opposite is true.

Told last week by a television interviewer that two-thirds of all Americans oppose the war, Cheney callously replied, "So?"

The public's opinion of whether to stay in a war doesn't matter to Bush and Cheney because they know they're right. As for the soldiers who are sacrificing their lives, limbs and sanity in this war, they are, after all, Cheney said, volunteers. Many of those volunteers, however, are serving multiple deployments. Tens of thousands of troops have been forbidden to leave the armed forces when their hitch is up under a "stop-loss" policy used to offset a serious shortage of soldiers.

Next month, Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will once again come before Congress to give their assessment of the situation and to make recommendations. By all reports, they intend to say what President Bush has said all along: Stay the course. The slow withdrawal of troops from Iraq will be halted when the force level hits 140,000.

Nothing is likely to change between now and January 20 next year, when a new president takes office. The course that president takes will be dictated by events to come. But the next president must not stay the haphazard, endless course set by Bush and Cheney. And above all, unlike Bush and Cheney, the next president must tell the American people the truth.