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To: Dr. Frank fan
Sure it was. The person who wrote this is ignorant or a liar.

You know, the administration was NOT prepared for this kind of resistance.

The longer this goes on, the more damgaed Bush will be.

That was part of the deal and I think everyone understood that.

The American people, for the most part, have shown quite a bit of patience. I think it's up to the administration to state it's case. Are they doing it effectively?

18 posted on 03/19/2006 5:28:48 PM PST by zarf (It's time for a college football playoff system.)
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To: zarf
You know, the administration was NOT prepared for this kind of resistance.

Actually, I don't know that. How do you know how much resistance the administration "was prepared for"? Did you look in the Federal Registry of Officially Prepared-For Things? How many "RUs" (Resistance Units - the internationally accepted unit of measuring the quantity of resistance) did it say the administration was, officially, prepared for?

Sorry for the sarcasm :) It's just that too often statements like this get repeated without being examined. If all you're saying is, the administration didn't have a detailed contingency plan for a situation where terror-insurgency lasts for years, well ok, I'm sure they didn't. (I don't even know what such a contingency plan could possibly look like, BTW.) They have had to adapt on the fly (the early troubles with Bremer, etc.) and call audibles. (Not that I think there's any better alternative to improvisation and adaptation. There's no Textbook containing Mathematically-true Theorems regarding how one should or shouldn't wage a counterinsurgency that i know of.)

But if you're trying to imply that George Bush and Dick Cheney and whoever else "the administration" signifies, personally weren't (mentally?) "prepared for" even the mere possibility of terror-insurgency lasting for years, well then I call foul. That's mind-reading at best.

Anyway, this is all beside the point of what I was responding to in the article. The author did not simply claim that the current insurgency level is more than they were prepared for (in whatever sense); he said " “more fighting and sacrifice.” [..] is not what was being predicted three years ago." That is simply false. Whether or not you're right about your "prepared for" claim, the fact remains that Bush has repeatedly and explicitly stated in speech after speech that this would be a long war which called for sacrifices.

The longer this goes on, the more damgaed Bush will be.

I guess. Not sure why this matters. Have people all forgotten that Bush is a second-termer? He can't run again. This isn't about "Bush", I really couldn't care less about Bush at this point.

I think it's up to the administration to state it's case. Are they doing it effectively?

I don't know (and one must keep in mind the handicap they start out with - a completely hostile/biased media), but again I have to call a time-out here and ask you to backtrack. Why exactly is it "up to the administration to state its case"? "Case" for what, exactly? Invading Iraq? They already did that - successfully - in late 2002. The invasion of Iraq occurred. It happened, it's a historical event. Now that it's in our past, and it's about 3 years later, what other "case" about it is there to be "stated" that wouldn't be redundant? There is absolutely no need, in any practical sense, to re-argue over and over again for Invading Iraq In 2003.

The only related issue which perhaps needs a "case" to be made is, should we continue to occupy Iraq and defend its government from terror-insurgency. (I note in passing that this is a completely separate issue from whether it was ok to invade in 2003.) But the thing is, withdrawal advocates have absolutely no good arguments whatsoever (to a large extent they're so confused they spend most of their time re-arguing against the 2003 invasion, as if that's relevant to anything). They know it too, because whenever they're pressed (i.e. the Congressional vote on withdrawal) they quickly back off. After all, the underlying premise of their stance (to anyone with a brain) is that we don't need to care whether Al Qaeda wages attacks against and gains a foothold in a naturally-wealthy democratic Middle-east country. And the thing is, that premise is so self-evidently idiotic that it shouldn't need to be argued against, effectively or not.

25 posted on 03/19/2006 8:24:18 PM PST by Dr. Frank fan
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