Rhetoric vs. Reality
For obvious domestic political reasons, the Bush Administration going into the war had downplayed the scale and duration of a post-war occupation mission. When then-Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told legislators that such a mission would require several hundred thousand U.S. troops, his assessment had been immediately dismissed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as “wildly off the mark.” Wolfowitz explained that “I am reasonably certain that (the Iraqi people) will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down.”
The New York Times, Mar. 31, 2004
An enraged mob attacked four American contractors here today, shooting them to death, burning their vehicles, dragging their bodies through the downtown streets and then hanging the charred corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River…The steadily deteriorating security situation in the Falluja area, west of Baghdad, has become so dangerous that no American soldiers or Iraqi security staff responded to the attack against the contractors.
5 comments
Copy link for RSS feed for comments on this post
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
you know, last year on the day the shuttle exploded, about a month before the “start” of the war, i schlepped on down to a towne hall with my representative dana rohrbacher.
he scoffed at all that were challenging the whitehouse’s march to war.
“i have just come from afghanistan, a country i know a little about,” he would reply. “they see an american contingent and teem to the streets to great you, waving flags. when we go to bagdahd, and capture that buthcer saddam, there is no doubt in my mind they will see us the exact same way.”
now, of course we called bullshit. “where do you think those afghans GOT those flags, dana?” “if you stormed in here heavily armed, i’d probably kiss your ass, too, dana.” “did you travel outside kabul, dana?” and so on.
the mob in falluja obviously didnt get the minutes of that meeting.
Comment by josh — March 31, 2004 @ 3:41 pm
Test this, pal.
Comment by Brianotron — April 1, 2004 @ 6:13 am
Test again.
Comment by Briantologist — April 1, 2004 @ 6:16 am
Final superfluous comment.
Comment by megalodon — April 1, 2004 @ 6:18 am
Okay, seriously this time, last test post.
Comment by marty stouffer — April 1, 2004 @ 6:22 am