As Iraq descends into chaos again, more than a decade after „Mission Accomplished,“ media commentators and politicians have mostly agreed upon calling the war a „mistake.“ But the „mistake“ rhetoric is the language of denial, not contrition: it minimizes the Iraq War‘s disastrous consequences, removes blame, and deprives Americans of any chance to learn from our generation‘s foreign policy disaster. The Iraq War was not a „mistake“ — it resulted from calculated deception. The painful, unvarnished fact is that we were lied to. Now is the time to have the willingness to say that.