Today marks the three-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. ThinkProgress has created a timeline that tells the story of the Iraq war over the past 36 months.

Prior to the war, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claimed the Iraq war might last “five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.” But as the war has intensified and escalated into a “long, hard slog,” some of the critical details have faded from our memories.

The timeline catalogues the key events, quotes and pictures of the war. Check it out and spread the word. And make sure to tell us what we missed in the comments section.

Today on ABC’s This Week, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) rejected the administration’s upbeat rhetoric on the Iraq war, claiming that its “mindless banter” hides the real picture of what’s going on in the region. Watch it:

Transcript:

STEPHANOPOULOS: So we have to start thinking about a staged withdrawal?

HAGEL: Well, we always should be thinking about that. But somehow we are going to have to bring into the mix here the obligations, responsibility, not just of the Iraqi people but of the region.

And this mindless kind of banter about, well, if we leave, the whole place falls apart; we can’t leave; we can’t even think about leaving. Wait a minute: You just showed on your screen the cost to the American people of the last three years.

It’s helping bankrupt this country, by the way. We didn’t think about any of that and not just the high cost of lives and the continuation of that but our standing in the world.

And I would define it this way. Are we better off today than we were three years ago? Is the Middle East more stable than it was three years ago? Absolutely not. It’s more unstable.

Crooks & Liars highlights Hagel’s comments about the ongoing civil war in Iraq.

Today on Face the Nation, Vice President Cheney defended his dubious pre-war and post-war claims by blaming the media:

[T]here is a constant sort of perception if you will that’s created because what is newsworthy is the carbomb in Baghdad, it’s not all the work that went on that day in 15 other provinces in terms of making progress in rebuilding Iraq.

On Meet the Press, Tim Russert asked Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) about the administration’s repeated attempts to blame the media. Watch it:

Transcript:

RUSSERT: Some in the administration say the media is distorting the good news that’s coming out of Iraq.

MURTHA: They said the same thing about Vietnam. They said the same thing over and over and over about Vietnam. They said we’re winning the war in Vietnam. You could go back and get quotes from Vietnam and you’ll see the same kind of reports. The media is the one that’s distorting. Everything is going fine in Vietnam. Well, everything is not going fine in Iraq. They have to realize it. When the whole world is against you, when our international reputation has been diminished so substantially, when all the countries in the region say we’d be better off without us being in Iraq, when the people themselves in Iraq say — and American people say it, I mean, who is right?

Go to Crooks and Liars to watch Murtha’s entire appearance.

This morning on Face the Nation, Cheney stubbornly defended his pre-war claim that U.S. troops would be “greeted as liberators” and his May ’05 claim that the insurgency was “in its last throes.” Watch it:

Transcript:

SCHIEFFER: Mr. Vice President, all along the government has been very optimistic. You remain optimistic. But I remember when you were saying we’d be greeted as liberators, you played down the insurgency ten months ago. You said it was in its last throes. Do you believe that these optimistic statements may be one of the reasons that people seem to be more skeptical in this country about whether we ought to be in Iraq?

CHENEY: No, I think it has less to do with the statements we’ve made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality, than it does the fact that there is a constant sort of perception if you will that’s created because what is newsworthy is the carbomb in Baghdad, it’s not all the work that went on that day in 15 other provinces in terms of making progress in rebuilding Iraq.