No.... before the war started people like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were saying we'd be out in a few weeks or months
Seriously? You have any links to support this claim? All I have ever heard is the "as long as it takes and not a day longer" shpiel. Or shpeel? How does one spell schpiel?
Confronting Iraq
April 1, 2003
Prewar predictions coming back to bite
Officials who forecast a brief conflict now say it'll be neither quick nor easy. That could open the administration to tough questions about credibility.
By Susan Page, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON -- Armchair generals and media critics aren't the only people whose comments are giving heartburn to administration officials defending the progress of the war with Iraq. The officials also face questions about their own remarks made before the fighting began.
Then, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke optimistically in interviews and at briefings about the prospects that the war would be short, Iraqi resistance limited and Iraqi citizens welcoming.
<snip>
Changing rhetoric of war
* Feb. 7, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to U.S. troops in Aviano, Italy: "It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."
* March 4, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a breakfast with reporters: "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.
* March 11, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars: "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."
* March 16, Vice President Cheney, on NBC's Meet the Press: "I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . 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."
The war begins
[EDIT:The erroneous predictions continue]
continued..........
usatoday.com |
