What it's really all about
"An early withdrawal would have serious negative consequences. Iraq would be in danger of exploding into civil war; jihadists would claim they had beaten the American infidels; many Iraqis would feel abandoned by the power that came in and wrecked their country; other Middle Eastern regimes would worry about American steadfastness; the violence could spread to Iran, which could make everything worse. And there's this: The United States would lose control of Iraq's oil fields, the existence of which made Iraq a much more central concern to American policy-makers in the prelude to the war than it otherwise would have been." — from an editorial in the June 16 Baltimore Sun arguing against the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
Intractable
"Well, that's quite a statement. First, let me say that there isn't a person at this table who agrees with you that we're in a quagmire and that there's no end in sight." — US war secretary Donald Rumsfeld responding to Democrat Senator Edward Kennedy's statement during a June 23 Senate armed services hearing that "This war has been consistently and grossly mismanaged. Our troops are dying and there really is no end in sight. And we are now in a seemingly intractable quagmire."
No end in sight
"I recognise things I don't know, and that's one of them. There are so many variables that I would be reluctant to pretend that I could look into that crystal ball and say, X number of months or X number of years. I can't." — Rumsfeld, June 28, responding to a reporter's question as to how long he thought it would take to establish "security" in Iraq.
From Green Left Weekly, July 6, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.