Making the Vietnam War Look Good

Retired Colonel Mike Turner discusses the Iraq war, in ‘Staying the Course’ Isn’t an Option, Newsweek online:

From a purely military standpoint, the war in Iraq is an unmitigated disaster. This administration failed to make even a cursory effort at adequately defining the political end state they sought to achieve by removing Saddam Hussein, making it impossible to precisely define long-term military success…

To discern the truth about Iraq, Americans must simply look beyond the spin. This war is not some noble endeavor, some great struggle of good against evil as the Bush administration would have us believe. We in the military have heard these grand pronouncements many times before by men who have neither served nor sacrificed. This war is an exercise in colossal stupidity and hubris which has now cost more than 1,000 American military lives, which has empowered Al Qaeda beyond anything those butchers might have engineered on their own and which has diverted America’s attention and precious resources from the real threat at the worst possible time. And now, in a supreme act of truly breathtaking gall, this administration insists the only way to fix Iraq is to leave in power the very ones who created the nightmare.

Turner is a retired war planner who worked on Operation Desert Storm: in other words, a typical, bleeding-heart liberal, Air Force Academy graduate, career officer pansy. The full article is very much worth reading, even if the author is a pinko subversive fighter pilot.

The Hidden Casualties of Iraq

The Wounds of War in today’s Newsday is a must-read:

Like his staff, who brim with frustration at what they see as the irresponsible disinclination of the American people to understand the costs of the war to thousands of American soldiers, the hospital’s chief surgeon feels that most Americans have their minds on other things.

“It is my impression that they’re not thinking about it a whole lot at all,” said Lt. Col. Ronald Place. As he spoke, the man who has probably seen more of America’s war wounded than anyone since the Vietnam War sobbed as he sat at a table in his office.