Upbeat Tone Ended With War
Officials' Forecasts Are Questioned

"A senior administration official who briefed reporters Monday on condition of anonymity said Rumsfeld "has right along said that he thought that fighting was likely to last weeks, not months." Rumsfeld told troops last month that "it could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." Rumsfeld also contradicted the Army chief of staff, who told the Senate that "several hundred thousand" troops would be needed to occupy Iraq. "Far off the mark," Rumsfeld said.

Some officials' predictions may yet be realized, even if early signs have not been encouraging. For example, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz said in a speech earlier this month that "the Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator." Wolfowitz said yesterday that "we probably did underestimate the willingness of this regime to commit war crimes," but he said other forecasts were on course."

This from a guy who has whined for months about how Saddam Hussein is so evil that "he gassed his own people." (Of course, Noam Chomsky has pointed out how the Kurds are Saddam's own people in the way that the Cherokee were Andrew Jackson's own people, while others have pointed out that the gassing occurred when Iraq was an ally during the Reagan administration.)

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Link culled from Eschaton.

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