Two years: Sergio Vieira de Mello

I may have my days wrong, the anniversary may have fallen yesterday or it may be tomorrow, I can't seem to pin down the exact date. But in any case it has now been two years since the gravity of the misadventure and the extent of the disater in Iraq became truly evident to all.

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello was among the 17 people who died in Tuesday's bombing of the organization's headquarters in Iraq.

Salim Lone, Vieira de Mello's spokesman in Iraq, told CNN that he had been with the U.N. diplomat two hours before he died.

"I grieve for him, I grieve for his family," Lone said. "I grieve most of all for people of Iraq."

That was the end of any hope for us in Iraq, and certainly the end of hope for the Iraqi people. It was a perfect snapshot of our horrendous occupation: a failure to plan properly, leading to a gaping security hole; the obliviousness of "The Green Zone" to anything outside the protected walls; the administration's refusal to work with the UN, in fact, its determination to undercut the UN's efforts at every turn; the advantage suicide bombers have in urban areas; the complete and determined self-destructiveness and nihilism of the insurgency.

When Viera de Mello died in the rubble, the full horror of what we'd unleashed became apparent. It was the moment it became clear that our troops, the Iraqi civilians, and the insurgents themselves would be locked in an embrace that none can now break, least of all the criminally foolish architects of this insane crusade.

A crusade that grows worse each month, despite all of the happy clapping and all of the "the media is distorting things" bullshit.