Joe Lieberman Sunday became the latest champion of an endless war in Iraq to denigrate the accomplishments and sacrifices of the thousands of United States troops who have given their lives there.

On ‘Fox News Sunday,' Lieberman criticized Barack Obama as being prepared to accept "retreat and defeat" due to his goal to withdraw United States troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office, if he is elected president.

Defeat?

When Lieberman and most of his congressional colleagues abdicated their responsibility to declare war - or not - in October 2002, the Bush Administration led the US and our allies into a war designed to remove Saddam Hussein's government from power. Why? Because Hussein was an amoral, brutal dictator, willing to kill any people he considered a nuisance with the same level of remorse most of us have when we swat a mosquito. Still, most US citizens would likely not have considered this a problem our young men and women should die to solve. But President Bush did his best to convince us that Hussein's murderous inclinations were a direct threat to us because he possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The purposes of the war were to remove Hussein and his government from power and secure the WMD.

By May 1, 2003, when Bush declared an end to major military operations in Iraq, Hussein's government had been toppled. The loved ones of the courageous troops who gave their lives in that effort might be dismayed to hear that Senator Lieberman considers that monumental accomplishment to be a defeat. But it's been more than five years. Perhaps he has forgotten.

As for the second part of that initial goal, it's true that our troops were not able to locate or secure the WMD. That, of course, was not their fault. Turns out there weren't any.

Whoops.

But the Bush Administration asked our troops for more.

US forces fought insurgency and reined in terror long enough for Iraqi leaders to sign an interim constitution in June of 2004, long enough for eight million Iraqis, in January 2005, to vote in the country's first free elections in a half century as they chose a Transitional National Assembly. At that point more than a thousand US Troops had given their lives.

But those accomplishments, for Lieberman, are apparently placed under the heading of ‘defeat'.

Still, we asked our troops for more.

So our troops continued to police Iraq, putting their lives on the line each day as they successfully staved off the all out civil war that seemed to breaking out around them. Their unwavering courage and commitment allowed nearly ten million Iraqis to approve a constitution in October 2005 as US troop deaths approached two thousand, and allowed more than 11 million voters to take part in parliamentary elections in December of the same year.

But the attainment of those goals were just more markers along the path to defeat for Lieberman.

Thirty-six months will have passed between those parliamentary elections and January 2009, when a new US president takes office. US troop deaths will have doubled to more than four thousand. Still, people like Lieberman continue to ask our troops for more, refusing to define the victory that will allow them to come home, refusing to pressure the Iraqi people and their government with a date - hard or soft - by which they will be expected to fend for themselves.

Lieberman, who shamelessly campaigned for the number two spot on the Republican ticket (he twice used the phrase "McCain and I" during the interview) is trying to convince us that if the troops come home now, even with all they've accomplished, they come home as failures.

The question is not about retreat or defeat. Our troops have already attained everything that was originally set out for them, and much, much more. The question is whether politicians of Joe Lieberman's ilk will ever be willing to bring the troops home victorious, or whether they will forever define victory as an unattainable mirage at the edge of the Iraqi desert.