Definition: A difficult or precarious situation; a predicament. Rumsfeld is so out of touch with reality IMHO. I bet he's glad he's not over there right now. Read this account from a soldier who is really there IMHO...it's only going to get worse as time passes and resistance grows.
While that definition is a sound and official one, it's not what we normally think of when thinking of a quagmire. Most of the time, we're willing to give things time to be sorted out (knowing that everything takes time) before we declare it a quagmire. The Iraq situation may well end up being what most people would think of as a quagmire, but not yet. Not while it's still so relatively early in the game. But if nothing's changed by the end of the year, there would be more consideration for such a declaration (but not from the Pentagon. There's no benefit to them to define the situation as thus even if it were years down the line with no changes, or a worse situation).
I don't think landing another aircraft on the USS Lincoln is going to do it for the voters next time. This is becoming more regrettable by the day.
"There are some who feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on," Bush said. "We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Anybody who wants to help, we'll welcome," Bush said. "But we got plenty tough force there right now to make sure the situation is secure." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Those who blow up the electricity lines really aren't hurting America, they're hurting the Iraq citizens," Bush said. "Their own fellow citizens are being hurt. But we will deal with them harshly as well." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "See, we've been there for, what -- I mean, how many days" Bush said. "Eighty, 90? Frankly, it wasn't all that long ago that we started military operations. And we got rid of him; much faster than a lot of people thought." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63474-2003Jul2.html?nav=hptop_tb Sounds like someone is getting a little flustered.
I don't like the direction things are going in Iraq for sure. As a former USMC veteran who saw time in Somalia (fun place, not!) and off of Bosnia, I know a quagmire when I see one. My old Corps buddies who I keep in contact with have told me the same thing. They as a whole are frustrated and ready to get the heck out of dodge. Winning the war is easy, but winning the peace? That's a toughie. I don't like to complain about a situation and possess nary a solution, but what can we do? If we evacuate, we will allow an extreme Islamic government to take over (bad option, who wants another Iran?). If we stay, we are going to see nightly casualty reports as the resistance continues unabated. A classic damned if you do, damned if you don't situation if I've ever seen one.
Wow, it's almost like we should have never went there in the first place. Too bad no one thought of that beforehand.
Of course Rumsfeld and Bush thought of that long beforehand. But they knew they weren't going to be there doing the job. "Bring them on". Yeah, easy for you to say when you are not getting shot at. Anyway, why are those reserves being sent there? They sounded more like ordinary people with ordinary jobs and lives in their hometowns. Why not station full-time soldiers to deal with those dangerous situations? I am puzzled.
Is the war on terror in a quagmire? I dont think so. Niether does William Bacon..Front Page Magazine.com Posted July 3, 2003 As the campaign season heats up, both the president’s detractors and his hopeful successors have turned the War on Terror into a partisan issue. Those who were most opposed to engaging in a war on terrorism in the first place now feign concern that we are “losing” it. “Where is Saddam Hussein? Where is Osama bin Laden?” they ask, as though their freedom means our nation has been defeated. In fact, the United States has made crippling strikes upon the operations of terrorists worldwide and made the American homeland a far safer place to live. This can be proven on many levels. The first seems fairly obvious. Since 9/11, the United States has not seen its territory again attacked by her enemies. Whatever else we may have done in this war, let us not lose sight of that fact: not a single American civilian has been lost on American soil since the initial attacks. The second and third major successes are just as obvious, unless one has been hiding in a cave with Osama bin Laden for the past year-and-a-half: The U.S. military, along with our allies, have taken the battles in this war to the nations that have supported terrorism – and won significant victories. The history of that first victory is clear: The al-Qaeda network was based in Afghanistan on 9/11. The theocratic Taliban government there provided not only a safe haven, but actually thrived off the presence and support of bin Laden’s troops. The United States government demanded that the Taliban eliminate its support of al-Qaeda and surrender bin Laden and other terrorist leaders to our justice. The Taliban refused, choosing instead to believe that U.S. was a paper tiger, unwilling to back its strong words with action. That was their fatal mistake. Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime in Iraq supported terror throughout the Middle East, paying bounties to the families of suicide bombers in Palestinian territory. Under the terms of the cease-fire ending the First Gulf War, the Iraqi regime was to submit itself to international inspections in order to verify that it had dismantled and destroyed its capability to create weapons of mass destruction. For years, the regime flouted that requirement, among many others, hoping its economic linkages to European powers and Saddam’s delusion belief in the weakness of the United States would reduce its risk of being toppled. Again, a terminal miscalculation. These two victories have, themselves, gained another success to our war. These wins have shattered the image of the U.S. during the Clinton era: a weak nation, unwilling to defend itself or its interests. Since the Hussein regime has been removed, other governments supporting terrorism have tended to listen more carefully to our views. Few other governments seem willing to repeat the Taliban and Ba’athist leaders’ mistakes. The Hidden Possibly far more important, though, are the quiet victories, the ones that don’t involve well-televised divisions of troops and massive “shock and awe” air strikes. We’ve had more than our share of those, as well. The American intelligence machinery has been released on our enemies, and it have done their job well to date. We used to believe that al-Qaeda was a massive, unknowable shadow government, somewhat along the lines of the Mafia. This turned out to be false. We now know that bin Laden has only about 180 members of his inner circle. Of that inner circle, more than half of al-Qaeda’s operational leadership is now out of action – dead or captured. The military commander of al-Qaeda, Mohammed Atef, is one of those now deceased. He was killed by a U.S. air strike on a Kabul hotel. His body was recovered along with scores of documents and videotapes, which led to other arrests. One of those arrested was Ramzi Binalshibh, a would-be 9/11 hijacker. Other al-Qaeda plans were revealed, including assassination plots which were to take place at a Persian Gulf summit. A major series of plots by al-Qaeda’s Southeast Asian allies – Jamaat Islamiya – were halted thanks to the intelligence captured in the attack. Atef’s replacement as military commander, Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi-born Palestinian who had served as al-Qaeda’s top recruiter, was arrested in Pakistan after being on the job for only a month. His arrest gave us even more intelligence to be used in this war, as has every other arrest of a major figure in the terrorist organization. Zubaydah’s arrest gave us information leading to the capture of Jose Padilla, the U.S. citizen alleged to be involved in a “dirty” bomb plot, as well as Omar al Faroup, the chief of al-Qaeda’s Southeast Asia operations. Each of these arrests, and the subsequent seizures of materials that came along with them, added libraries of information about al-Qaeda and its allies for our intelligence analysts. Each one, in turn, supported the next step, the next arrest, the next raid. Like other methodical investigations, each new revelation had a cumulative effect, directing forces to successfully pursuing the War on Terror. The Unexpected From the beginning of U.S. operations against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, prisoners were taken. Most were held in that country and released as soon as possible. Others were turned over to their native governments, as in Saudi Arabia. Some were taken to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where a makeshift prison was built for them. These prisoners, properly interrogated, provided information that led to the arrest of an active al-Qaeda cell in Morocco which had planned to bomb U.S. and British warships in the Straits of Gibraltar. Information from the Moroccan group led to the arrest of the man who planned the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri. Nashiri, during questioning, soon gave investigators access to his cell phone conversations with his al-Qaeda associates. One phone call led to a CIA-led airstrike on the chief of al-Qaeda operations in Yemen and three other terrorist leaders there. Soon Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief of al-Qaeda’s operations, was captured in Pakistan. Mohammed, or “KSM” as he has been known, a 38-year-old Pakistani, was called “the Brain” by al-Qaeda operatives and is believed to be the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. Not only was KSM arrested, so was Mustafa Ahmed al Hawsawi, an al-Qaeda financial leader who bankrolled the 9/11 attackers. Al-Qaeda members have been arrested fast and furiously since spring; Pakistanis were arresting al-Qaeda members and supporters on a weekly basis. Even capturing bin Laden himself is not beyond the realm of possibility. He is thought to be hiding in the tribal lands along Pakistan’s northwest border. At some point, either he or someone close to him will make a mistake, and he will be found. Have we won yet? In discussing the War on Terror, doubters and defeatists will always say you can’t defeat a hazy and indeterminate enemy like a terror network. For every tentacle of the hydra you strike off, two more will grow back. Others will say that we are fighting this war, like so many others, on the cheap. We take the “low hanging fruit” of the Taliban and Iraq. We aren’t willing to go after the terror leaders and financiers because they are too close to us. However, our catches have proven to the rest of the world that we are deadly serious about this struggle. No, we haven’t won … yet. But it’s a matter of time. http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8687 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"See, we've been there for, what -- I mean, how many days" Bush said. "Eighty, 90? Doesn't seem very long to Dubya or Rumsfeld and the rest of the chickenhaws. They are prepared to stay on until at least through the 2008 elections. Now I guess they wonder why would it seem long to the troops actually there? Now that Horowitz and the neocons writing articles about why the glorious invasion and occupation is not a quagmire, it must show that they're getting worried. I particularly chuckle at the reasoning from the Horowitz publication: The first seems fairly obvious. Since 9/11, the United States has not seen its territory again attacked by her enemies. Whatever else we may have done in this war, let us not lose sight of that fact: not a single American civilian has been lost on American soil since the initial attacks Let's employ this type of "reasoning" a bit. In the 8 years of the Clinton admins we didn't have an attack, therefore they did a better job fighting terror and Bush should resign for making the country unsafe.. So if we ever have another loss of a single American civilian on American soil, the entire war on terrorism should be disbanded.
Not to disagree with the fallacy of the logic you're arguing with, but there was an attack on the World Trade Center by foreign terrorists that resulted in death during the Clinton Administration.
Not to mention the attack on the USS Cole. Although it wasn't on U.S. "soil" it was a U.S. vessel containing U.S. citizens.
And the terrorist attack that caused the most casualties during that time, in Oklahoma City...Sadly, though, when the attack is from someone from the MidWest, as opposed to the MidEast, it can't be spun into attacking another country...or could it?
You forgot Khobar Towers in Saudi (technically U.S. soil as it functioned as a barracks for our troops), the embassy bombings in Africa (U.S. embassies are always considered sovereign U.S. soil)and TWA Flight 800 (I do believe it was a bomb that blew that plane up). After all those attacks, Clinton did absolutely, positively NOTHING except sit on his hands and try to investigate these acts of war as if they were in the criminal realm by the FBI. The only response we had back in his administration was to lob some cruise missiles on an aspirin factory in the Sudan. It showed weakness instead of strength and thus it led to 9/11. That and the fact Clinton stripped the intelligence budget, hamstrung the gathering of HUMINT (human intelligence) by making it nearly impossible to recruit agents (CIA officers work for the USG, agents are foreign nationals recruited as sources of information) by making it a crime for us to pay an agent who was suspected of crimes. Of course it never occurred to the Clinton crowd that most people who betray their country or cause are usually not nice people. I served in the Clinton military and saw firsthand the effects of Clinton and his minions upon our fighting forces.
I almost mentioned OKC, but since the quotes from the Administration talked about foreign military engagements, I didn't think OKC really applied. And I almost mentioned the conspiracy theory about McVeigh having help from Middle Eastern operatives, as well.
Quagmire. Sh*t. We've lost fewer than 200 people so far, and you guys are already ready to pack up and leave? You guys do realize that the opposition - which consists entirely of former Baathists and Republican Guard members, along with a few Hizbollah and Al Qaeda helpers, and not ordinary Iraqis - has a finite number of people, weapons, ammo, and funds, do you not? Their "resistance" will only last until the guys running it (probably Qusay and/or daddy) are caught or killed, which will only be a matter of time. This is not Afghanistan, and there are not all that many safe places to hide and launch a guerilla campaign from. They also have no Pakistan (Syria and Iran will not give them sanctuary when we're watching), and they have virtually no popular support outside of a few Tikriti families. The resistance will not last long. But call it what you will. I mean, if 200 casualties equals a "quagmire" to you... Call it whatever pleases you.
I have always respected your military info, but this time you've surpassed yourself. I was just watching an interview with one of the military leaders in charge of the Iraqi situation, and he said that part of the problem they're having is trying to determine who is and who isn't acting against them. You are seriously plugged in, bra, if you know more than he does. He did say that they still see a lot of the resistance as coming from former supporters of the Hussein regime, and expect it to lessen when/if Saddam is found or found to be dead, but he said that the attacks are coming so often now, and are getting more and more audacious, to use his word, so that it must be assumed that there is a certain amount of general support for the 'resistance'. He also said that finding people to speak out against and lead US forces to the militants is proving much harder than anticipated.
