Happy Anniversary to the Democrats’ leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, who nine years ago today offended troops and Americans alike by declaring the Iraq War “lost” and saying the surge was not working.

Keep in mind, this is the same Democratic leader that championed support for the dangerous Iran Nuclear Deal this fall and remains the party’s chief policy architect in the Senate.

Reacting to his comments nine years ago, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates didn’t mince words, calling them “one of the most disgraceful thing’s I’ve heard a politician say.”

In addition to the outrageous nature of Reid’s comments, history has also proven that they were inaccurate as well. While he claimed that “the surge” was not working, it is almost universally accepted that “the surge” was successful in its objective to diminish violence in Iraq. Stephen Biddle, Jeffrey A. Friedman and Jacob N. Shapiro recognized as much in their paper, “Testing The Surge.”

By the end of 2007, U.S. military fatalities had declined from their wartime monthly peak of 126 in May of that year to just 23 by December. From June 2008 to June 2011, monthly U.S. military fatalities averaged fewer than 11, a rate less than 15 percent of the 2004 through mid-2007 average and an order of magnitude smaller than their maximum. Monthly civilian fatalities fell from more than 1,700 in May 2007 to around 500 by December; from June 2008 to June 2011, these averaged around 200, or about one-tenth of the rate for the last half of 2006…Many analysts now credit what is commonly called “the surge” for this outcome.

As it is nine years to the day of Senator Reid’s incorrect and offensive comments, it’s important to remember how wrong he and liberals were on foreign policy in the past, and how their worldview cannot be trusted moving forward.