Rice refuses to predict US out of Iraq within ten years

Indeed!
It was perfectly clear that Condi (or was it Leeza speaking?;) did not want to telegraph to the "insurgents" when the U.S. will be pulling out of Iraq and there are good reasons for that. Some Senators (Lugar e.g.) understand the principle but press for some kind of timetable anyway. That's not entirely unreasonable since we would all like to know!
But then there were those (Sarbanes, e.g.) who seem to think badgering the witness is obligatory so they beat up on her just because they can. Will we see troop reductions next year, the year after, in five years, in ten years - tell us NOW! Condi stuck to her script which IMHO was a mistake. The correct answer would have been "Certainly we'll see our troops return well within ten years but I'm still not going to cite a specific time."
She did not come off looking very good saying it was "not appropriate" to "try and speculate" about such matters. I thought the bully senator came off looking much worse for his condescending attitude but then that is not what people here chose to discuss.
Now, what was that about spin?

You think by setting a 5 year timetable we will somehow alter the insurgency?

When a publication can either pick their most favorable or unfavorable photo of a subject, viewers can see for themselves what kind of person the subject of the photo is. Very effective since the public doesn't see the photos not selected.

In the meantime, I look forward to your posting pictures of those permanent air bases being built in Iraq. :)

Doesn't the US have bases in a lot of countries?

Doesn't the US have bases in a lot of countries?

Yeah...all over the world pretty much.

Doesn't the US have bases in a lot of countries?

Yes (I think about 65 major U.S. military installations worldwide) presumably with permission from the governments of those countries to attain mutually beneficial goals.

The White House is sweating out the possibility that one or more top officials will soon be indicted on criminal charges. But the Bush administration is immune to prosecution for its greatest offense - its colossal and profoundly tragic incompetence.

Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, addressed the administration's arrogance and ineptitude in a talk last week that was astonishingly candid by Washington standards.

"We have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran," said Mr. Wilkerson. "Generally, with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita ... we haven't done very well on anything like that in a long time. And if something comes along that is truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence."


Mr. Wilkerson gave his talk before an audience at the New America Foundation, an independent public policy institute. On the all-important matter of national security, which many voters had seen as the strength of the administration, Mr. Wilkerson said:

"The case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process. What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made."

When the time came to implement the decisions, said Mr. Wilkerson, they were "presented in such a disjointed, incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn't know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out."

Where was the president? According to Mr. Wilkerson, "You've got this collegiality there between the secretary of defense and the vice president, and you've got a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either."

One of the consequences of this dysfunction, as I have noted many times, is the unending parade of dead or badly wounded men and women returning to the U.S. from the war in Iraq - a war that the administration foolishly launched but now does not know how to win or end.

While not "evaluating the decision to go to war," Mr. Wilkerson told his audience that under the present circumstances "we can't leave Iraq. We simply can't." In his view, if American forces were to pull out too quickly, the U.S. would end up returning to the Middle East with "five million men and women under arms" within a decade.

Nevertheless, he is appalled at the way the war was launched and conducted, and outraged by "the detainee abuse issue." In 10 years, he said, when this matter is "put to the acid test, ironed out, and people have looked at it from every angle, we are going to be ashamed of what we allowed to happen."

Mr. Wilkerson said he has taken some heat for speaking out, but feels that "as a citizen of this great republic," he has an obligation to do so. If nothing is done about the current state of affairs, he said, "it's going to get even more dangerous than it already is."

Nevertheless, he is appalled at the way the war was launched and conducted, and outraged by "the detainee abuse issue." In 10 years, he said, when this matter is "put to the acid test, ironed out, and people have looked at it from every angle, we are going to be ashamed of what we allowed to happen."

the U.S. would end up returning to the Middle East with "five million men and women under arms" within a decade.

It may be a lot sooner than ten years if the Bush adminstration insists on keeping its current "quarterly" changing of our reason for being in Iraq.
First we had WMD, then Iraqi freedom, then Democracy for Iraq, then defeat the insergents, then defeat global terroism. And not it is to "fight Radical Islam wherever it endangers peoples who love freedom."
When it comes down to making a decision on which side to support , moderate Isalm will support Radical isalm. That will leave us facing an enemy numbering close to one billion.

Have I mentioned the US MIGHT have a problem with isolationism?