"Wherever our military is sent in the world, you bring hope and justice and promise of a better day. You are worthy of the traditions you represent, the uniform you wear, the ideals you serve. America is counting on you, and our confidence is well placed."
His analysis boils down to this: his only fear is that CNN or Al-Jazeera will effectively transmit the work he will do. He is confident that very few US troops will have to give the ultimate sacrifice AS LONG AS they are permitted to do their work unhindered. That work will consist of inflicting massive casualties on Iraqi civilians, since they will be used as human shields by the regime. If squeamish hand-wringing over these casualties does not impair our resolve, we will triumph quickly with few dead soldiers.
I hope we destroy Al-Jazeera's transmission capacity as a prelude to war.
A colleague of mine who served in the 82nd Airborne went on television in New Hampshire (where he later became a Member of its House) and predicted Gulf War casualties of less than 200 at the time the armchair "experts" on national TV were wringing their hands about tens of thousands of casualties.
He was right, and they were wrong. He has since written the definitive history of that war, entitled simply, The Gulf War. It is used as a textbook at the War College in Levenworth. He knew what the hand-wringers do not -- the real capacity of our troops, our training, our weapons up against those of Iraq. As he says, the unofficial motto of the 82nd Airborne is, "We kill people and break their toys."
The United States is about to kill Saddam Hussein and "break his toys." And it will be just as clean (relatively) and overwhelming as this author describes.
Congressman Billybob
Click for "Oedipus and the Democrats"
Same thing Ted Kennedy said in the first Gulf War! Didn't happen then, and if the strategy is played right it won't happen now, either.
Once in a while a writer has the ability to pack so much truth into a couple of sparce sentences that it is, to me anyway, a nugget of pure gold.
I noted with interest that the Senate voted on the Iraq resolution last night at 1:00 a.m., EDT ("Live" said the feed from Fox News Channel). It was another bald-faced act of cowardice by the "council of cowards" in the Democrat-run Senate. The late hour of voting gave both those Democrats who voted FOR the resolution, and those who voted AGAINST, some degree of cover. There were numerous Democrat senators who voted "aye" to authorize the President to move on Iraq who you KNOW would have voted "no" had the vote come after the election. The Widow, Jean Carnahan, voted "aye," I'm sure, because she's in a tough race with Jim Talent. Had this vote come in January, and had she still been in the Senate, who doubts she would have been arm-twisted by the Daschles and the Byrds to have voted "no." So, the late Senate vote covered, to some extent, Democrats who voted "yes" from the ire of their own leftist constituencies, and Democrats who voted "no" from the ire of mainstream Americans.