mperdue said:
I did read it. He was refering to how long the conflict with Iraq would last. He was right, it was a short conflict. The current fighting is with the various terrorist groups who do not have the support of Iraq. The administration has made it clear, from the beginning, that we will fight terrorism as long as we need to.
Mario
OK, that's a good argument. I don't want to go back and forth here and let the sh*t fly, especially when any side is unlikely to change the other's mind, so I'll just make one last statement.
If the administration believed we would fight the Iraqi forces for a short period of time, where do they predict, if at all, how long we would fight an insurgency like we have. In the link I posted about Rumsfeld, he does address a post-war Iraq, but in regards to our obligation to build a nation that won't threaten its neighbors, won't have WMDs, etc. The Washington Post article I just posted about Cheney quotes Tim Russert asking if Americans are prepared for a "long, costly and bloody battle." It quotes Cheney as replying "Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way. . . " But we are still battling, and Russert's question didn't specifically ask how long we would battle the Iraqi forces, only how long we would battle.
Since we are still in Iraq two years after the fall of Baghdad, with no prior estimate of how long we would be there after the defeat of the Iraq army, that only lends credit to the belief that there was little thought put into the post-war operations.
I do agree that the "administration has made it clear, from the beginning, that we will fight terrorism as long as we need to." That's inarguable. It just seems to some that they may not have predicted that we would have to do so in Iraq for as long as we have.
I'm out. Everyone enjoy their weekend.