Is eight and a half years too little time to make up our mind about something?
According to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the answer is yes. In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Secretary Gates chided Americans for what he called a “rush to judgment” about the war, adding that everyone needs to “give us a little time to have this work.”
Gates insisted that the large number of casualties were nothing unexpected, and that “we warned everybody that would be the case last winter.” He claimed that the war was making progress, however, and said the Afghan army was exceeding its recruiting goals.
Yet the number of high profile failures in Afghanistan are awfully difficult to ignore. The war, now the longest in American history, is not going well by any stretch of the imagination, and Pentagon officials were openly questioning the “McChrystal Plan,” the current strategy.
And nothing has gotten better since then, though some things have gotten demonstrably worse. The change, rather, is that Secretary Gates is trying to coax another $33 billion in “emergency” funds out of the Congress, and the growing questions about the war are making that a tough vote. Instead of addressing the questions, the Pentagon has found it easier to simply mock the questioners as overly negative and insist, beyond all reason, that the war is still going swimmingly.
Actually, Afghanistan is going swimmingly, for the Russians, who are laughing their asses off.
But, of course, according to Gates, the Russians are "schizophrenic".
Ahh yes, I see in the news, still more "progress" being made;
Every day, in every way, we're getting better and better.
While the rich, get richer.
KABUL, Afghanistan – A military helicopter crashed during an early morning operation in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing three Australian commandoes and an American service member, officials said.
Two other international troops were killed Sunday in separate bombings in the south, NATO announced without specifying nationalities.
It's deja vu all over again. Why, it was Bob McNamara said almost the exact same thing. Way back when. Almost nine years in Afghaniscam and that's a quagmire. Replete with compulsive lying SecDefs, comprehensively out-of-touch presidents, titanic national debt, and mountains upon mountains of killed/and/or/wounded service personnel. I mean, article yesterday says 500,000 casualties. That's a lot of damaged boys and girls.
Yeah, Vietnam all over again. The exact same lies, almost word for word. And the stupid, ignorant American people fall for it again. To these clowns who children come home in boxes, you asked for it, you got it. Enjoy your 'freedom.'
Acturally six more american troops reported KIA today in Afghanistan. Yes, it's going according to plan; the more that die, the money is needed.
Gates might want to read a History book – it might help him to discover why Afghanistan has the well earned reputation as "the graveyard of soldiers and of empires" – NO 'invader' has ever really 'won' a war in that country.
And as with Vietnam – 'that "light at the end of the tunnel" is a fast moving freight train crashing into US!
Sadly, the American people are such stupid idiots and morons and sheep that they actually believe all of the LIES told by our 'leaders'.
Reminds me a lot of Vietnam and the Johnson administration. There was always "light at the end of the tunnel"….(not).