Rummy's Flat Earth Society
By Larry Johnson
Let's go back to October 2003 when Rummy asserted,
"In less than six months we have gone from zero Iraqis providing security to their country to close to a hundred thousand Iraqis. Indeed, the progress has been so swift that ... it will not be long before [Iraqi security forces] will be the largest and outnumber the U.S. forces, and it shouldn't be too long thereafter that they will outnumber all coalition forces combined."
So, what did Mr. Rumsfeld say today?
"the Iraqi army now has eight division and 33 brigade headquarters in operation, compared with none in July 2004, while the number of Iraqi army's combat battalions has grown to 95, compared to five in August 2004."
What in the world was he talking about in 2003?
I suggested after Murtha came out for withdrawal that he was channeling the Pentagon and suggested he might even be channeling Rummy who really never wanted this war to begin with.
Posted by Ron In Portland at November 29, 2005 09:39 PMThe one positive for keeping Rummy, Cheney, and Bush in office 2004-2008 is that they get enough rope to hang themselves. We get to watch them squirm as their plans turn the world into a flaming mess. If they had not been re-elected, we would still have the Iraq mess but dubya would be riding his bike, clearing brush, and laughing his ass off on permanent vacation in Crawford.
Posted by coal_train at November 29, 2005 09:54 PMThe present situation is far better than if Kerry had won.The Republican noise machine,would have hacked Kerry to death on any decision he made about Iraq.This long slow descent of the the Bushies
has opened the eyes of many.I hope it continues for three more years.
The Israelis have pretty much proven for 50+ years they won't take any crap and won't back down in the face of terrorism and aggression. Has their toughness immunized them from car bombers? Has their consistency in not bowing to terrorism made it go away? You have to push back against enemies such as these but it means more than making them die or flee at the barrel of a gun. How you deal with the causes of their violence is beyond my understanding but somebody gets paid a lot of money to think about how to do it and get it done. We could have 250,000 troops in Iraq for the next 25 years and every day of the week, 365 days of every goddamn year there would be attacks and killings inflicted on them. Given that reality WTF is "victory"? What is "winning"? I won't hold my breath waiting for the Right to define either term and how to get there, they don't know the answer.
You make excellent points, steve duncan, but I doubt that the wrong-wingers will allow themselves to admit that their strategy to rid the world of 'terrists' just might not be the correct one. We're stuck with this 'war on terrah' now that it's been started, because that's what Eisenhower's military-industrial complex needs to survive. Without it, they might just have to go back to competing in a 'free' market and risk failure. That would be very bad for the bottom line, and such corporate terrorism just cannot be allowed.
Posted by pessimist at November 30, 2005 06:33 AM