Last throes?
On Sunday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told several news shows that the Iraq insurgency may last a while:
"Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years. Foreign forces are not going to repress that insurgency"So much for Cheney's assessment that insurgents are in their "last throes." What will 2006 be like? Will U.S. troop levels in Iraq remain the same a year from now as members of Congress are in the midst of their re-election campaigns, trying to explain to constituents why their sons and daughters continue to come home in boxes (in the middle of the night), three years after "mission accomplished" and one year after insurgents were in the their "last throes?" And what about the veterans waiting for their travel pay? And will the really good armored vehicles make it to Iraq (not the "special ones" that Rumsfeld and members of Congress ride around in, I mean ones that G.I. Joe and Jane have to ride in)? I doubt it, but we'll see.
posted by Xavier and Pedro at 10:38 PM
2 Comments:
Your kidding me, right? This segment sounds to me like you are writing this just to try to be angsty to the military situation. Enough with the mission accomplished sign. I think that it has already been determined that it was meant for the sailors coming home from deployment. So what. The really good armored vehicles? You make this sound like it is something new – that until recently all people shared in using the same equipment at all times. Like we should expect the president not to ride around in air force one but to drive himself in a Hyundai. Or instead of Condi Rice, Rumsfeld or even Clinton being chauffeured, they should just be given Kias and asked to drive themselves. It is not uncommon for dignitaries and diplomats to be treated slightly better then the troops that they are visiting. This is how it’s always been. I guess instead of Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt meeting in Yalta for a conference they should have met somewhere close to the western front. The best is your comment about the special armor. Unless memory has failed me, Kevlar was invented in the middle to late 20’s and finally got on the market and into the military in the early 70’s. That means until then, there really was no “special” armor, just plated steel and leather – yet somewhere we managed to fight wars pretty effectively. Rumsfeld was right when he said, paraphrasing, that sometimes you have to fight with the military that you have instead of the one you want … and that do to the natures of supply and demand, they had no one that the armored vehicles would be so popular. This is not uncommon in military history. During world war I, the united states needed aircraft carriers so bad we just started half building ships then just throwing a plat form on it. They weren’t well tested by any means, but they were necessary to fight the war. Now-a-days, doing that would cause for criticisms on both sides. Why didn’t you test it long enough – Why is it not already in the field. It some ways it is a bit infuriating, and one of the reasons why I might support the return to the ole’ World War II moral movies.
And how long have we been in Iraq? You're telling me that in all that time, what was once the greatest industrial power in the world couldn't manufacture enough body armor, enough armored carriers and enough unspoiled food to give our troops what they really need?
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