United Press International,
WASHINGTON: On this anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, it is worth noting that in the 30 months between Dec. 7, 1941, and D-Day, the United States raised an army of 10 million men that was fit to take on Hitler's Wehrmacht, while also defeating Japan with the U.S. Navy and Marines.
More than 30 months have now passed since the fall of Baghdad, and the United States has not been able to train and build an Iraqi army that is fit to deploy alone. The contrast is more than telling; it reveals the fundamental problem of the Bush administration with the misadventure in Iraq.
In those 30 months of World War II between Pearl Harbor and the Normandy beaches, the government and people of the United States were in absolute and implacable agreement that they were in a war, in a fight to the finish that required the mobilization of all national resources.
Having lost 3,000 of its people to another sneak attack in September 2001, the Bush administration has used the rhetoric of war, but never really meant it. President Bush himself has shrunk from the reality of his own speeches. He has declared a global war on terrorism, pursued yet more tax cuts, and then gone on holiday. The Washington Post reported that as of August 2003, Bush had spent all or part of 166 days of his presidency at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Add in the travel time and the days spent at Camp David and at the family estate in Kennebunkport, Maine, and Bush had taken 27 percent of his presidency — 250 days — on vacation.
But he had time to connive at the crushing of those who dared to suggest that the Emperor had no clothes. Gen. Eric Shinseki, U.S. Army chief of staff, was derided and marginalized when he dared to state the obvious to the Senate Armed Services Committee, that the occupation of Iraq would require hundreds of thousands of troops.
“Wildly off the mark” blustered then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, as he testified before the House Budget committee in February, 2003 — and also pooh-poohed estimates that the war and occupation could cost over $100 billion. (Currently costs are over $300 billion and counting.)
“Every time we get a briefing on the war plan, it immediately goes down six different branches to see what the scenarios look like. If we costed each and every one, the costs would range from $10 billion to $100 billion,” Wolfowitz said then. He went on to say that Iraqis would welcome an American-led liberation force that “stayed as long as necessary but left as soon as possible,” but would oppose a long-term occupation. At least he was right about that.
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