Randolph T. Holhut: Waist-Deep In Iraq Quaqmire, Bush Presses On

[Dudley_DUright]

It's tough to definitively designate the single stupidest statement ever uttered by President Bush, but his recent ill-advised challenge to the Iraqis who have been attacking U.S. forces - "Bring them on!" - would certainly be near the top of the list.

Between accidents and attacks, troops are dying in Iraq at the rate of a soldier a day. Some - like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - may think this casualty rate is relatively benign.

A few weeks ago, Rumsfeld compared the violence against U.S. forces in Iraq to an average day of mayhem in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, Rumsfeld failed to point out that cops in our nation's capital are not getting fired upon with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.

No matter how the Bush administration spins it, things don't look good in Iraq. The current U.S. viceroy in Iraq, Paul Bremer, recently said that the U.S. "is going to fight them and impose our will on them" until "we have imposed law and order on this country."

That may take another 10 years and $360 billion to do. That's what the House Armed Services Committee recently estimated could be the timeframe and the monetary expense for the occupation of Iraq - an estimate the Defense Department isn't disputing. If the current U.S. military casualty rate remains the same, the human cost would be more than 3,500 dead and thousands more maimed.

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