A Cakewalk
Here is Kenneth Adelman's Februrary, 2002 Washington Post editorial predicting that Iraq would be "a cakewalk."
believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; and (4) now we're playing for keeps.
Oops. As to "(2) they've become much weaker," the point to me is, then why were they so dangerous to us if they were so weak?
Today Iraqi forces are much weaker. Saddam's army is one-third its size then, in both manpower and number of divisions. It still relies on obsolete Soviet tanks, which military analyst Eliot Cohen calls "death traps." The Iraqi air force, never much, is half its former size.
Iraqi forces have received scant spare parts and no weapons upgrades. They have undertaken little operational training since Desert Storm.
Again, so why were they so dangerous to us?
In 1991 we engaged a grand international coalition because we lacked a domestic coalition. Virtually the entire Democratic leadership stood against that President Bush. The public, too, was divided. This President Bush does not need to amass rinky-dink nations as "coalition partners" to convince the Washington establishment that we're right. Americans of all parties now know we must wage a total war on terrorism.
Gotta love that "rinky dink" stuff. As Colin Powell put it so well, these guys are fucking morons.
Hussein constitutes the number one threat against American security and civilization. Unlike Osama bin Laden, he has billions of dollars in government funds, scores of government research labs working feverishly on weapons of mass destruction -- and just as deep a hatred of America and civilized free societies.
So, just a couple paragraphs earlier they were incredibly weak, then in this paragraph they're our biggest threat? And what about those WMDs that weren't there?
Gordon and O'Hanlon say we must not "assume that Hussein will quickly fall." I think that's just what is likely to happen.
He got the "quickly fall" part right. I guess the Administration was right there. But these idiots apparently never once wondered, "what then?" How would it be accomplished? By knocking out all his headquarters, communications, air defenses and fixed military facilities through precision bombing. By establishing military "no-drive zones" wherever Iraqi forces try to move. By arming the Kurds in the north, Shiites in the south and his many opponents everywhere. By using U.S. special forces and some U.S. ground forces with protective gear against chemical and biological weapons. By stationing theater missile defenses, to guard against any Iraqi Scuds still in existence. And by announcing loudly that any Iraqi, of any rank, who handles Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, in any form, will be severely punished after the war.
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