Nobody said it would be "quick and easy"

Oh, is that so?

My friend Alamo City Commando is doing Herculean work to try and put a postive spin on the quagmire in Iraq, where a neverending string of bombings have brought daily reports of new mass casualties.

But when he made the statement that “nobody said it would be quick and easy,” he was either being a bit too literal or has forgotten a few things that happened more than two years ago.

So lets take a step back in history and meet a few “nobodies.”


Ken Adelman, former U.N. ambassador, in an Op-Ed for the Washington Post, Feb. 13, 2002:
"I 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.

Richard Perle, former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, in a PBS interview July 11, 2002:
"Saddam is much weaker than we think he is. He's weaker militarily. We know he's got about a third of what he had in 1991."
"But it's a house of cards. He rules by fear because he knows there is no underlying support. Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to U.S. troops in Aviano, Italy on Feb. 7, 2003: "It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a breakfast with reporters on March 4, 2003: "What you'd like to do is have it be a short, short conflict. ... Iraq is much weaker than they were back in the '90s," when its forces were routed from Kuwait.

Vice President Dick Cheney, on NBC's Meet the Press on March 16, 2003: "I think it will go relatively quickly, ... (in) weeks rather than months." He predicted that regular Iraqi soldiers would not "put up such a struggle" and that even "significant elements of the Republican Guard ... are likely to step aside."


This administration went into Iraq totally unprepared for a multi-year conflict that still has no end in sight. They may not have used the words “quick and easy,” but that is the kind of operation they prepared for.