President George Bush ordered the Iraq invasion in 2003 amid a cloud of misinformation, misjudgments and misleading rhetoric.

So five years later, perhaps no one should be surprised to hear Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney talking about the bungled war effort in Iraq as though it were some sort of historic victory.

Still, their statements reflect an amazing amount of chutzpa.

U.S. troops quickly flattened Saddam Hussein’s regime. But five years later, the United States remains bogged down in the midst of an ethnic conflict in a region long known for violence, religious fanaticism and resentment of the West.

U.S. forces are stretched thin, nearly 4,000 Americans have lost their lives, many more have been injured and the costs to American taxpayers are soaring.

Meanwhile, fundamental challenges to U.S. security by the likes of Iran and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida have been put on the back burner.

Amid many other well-chronicled mistakes, Bush’s decision to prematurely turn over political control of Iraq left our forces there at the mercy of feuding politicians in Baghdad.

Fifteen months ago a bipartisan commission headed by a personal friend warned Bush that his open-ended military commitment to Baghdad was probably making the situation in Iraq worse.

The panel, known as the Iraq Study Group, suggested that most U.S. combat troops could be out of Iraq by the end of the first quarter of 2008 — in other words, right about now.

Bush praised the panel and promptly ignored its advice. Today the U.S. troop commitment is even higher than it was then, and his mistaken open-ended military commitment continues.

Attempting to put the most positive spin on Iraq, Bush on Wednesday once again turned to shoddy propaganda.

He deliberately confused one of the bloodthirsty groups in Iraq with bin Laden’s organization, which is based in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Both groups use the name “al-Qaida,” but it is only bin Laden’s organization that represents a serious threat to American security.

There was a significant decline in attacks by insurgents in Iraq last year, and that was certainly welcome. But there has been little improvement in recent months.

And according to Bush himself, last year’s security gains remain tenuous and dependent upon the continued commitment of relatively high numbers of American troops for an indeterminate amount of time.

As most Americans understand, this is not what a great “victory” looks like.

The United States needs a different strategy. It should depend less on American soldiers and taxpayers, and more on the international community, the Arab world and the Iraqis themselves to build a strong, secure democracy where Hussein once ruled.