Republican John McCain declared for the first time Thursday he believes the Iraq war can be won by 2013, although he rejected suggestions that his talk of a timetable put him on the same side as Democrats clamoring for full-scale troop withdrawals.
Holy carp! And this is what a sane Republican looks like in public -- somebody who thinks the Iraq War will be over in "only" five years! During the campaign season, a time of optimistic, sunny promises, McCain hopes that we've hit the halfway point of this bloody, needless, expensive war. Privately, he's gotta be thinking, what, seven, eight years? Let's look at a couple metrics:
- We're only halfway through the war at this point
- If the rate of the conflict holds, we can expect a further 4,000 US deaths before the war is over.*
- We can similarly expect 30,000 wounded
- If the rate of the calmer last year continues, we're still facing 3,500 deaths and 22,000 wounded.
- This presumes that Muqtada al-Sadr still finds it advantageous to maintain his unilateral cease-fire.
- Oh, and the cost? Another $533 billion at this rate.
How long is McCain projecting to keep us in Iraq? Well, if we start tomorrow, we can complete the following before the Iraq debacle is over under a President McCain:
- Re-stage the American Civil War
- Or our involvement in World War One
- Or our involvement in World War Two
- Re-create the reign of Julius Ceasar
- Run through just shy of two Kennedy Administrations
- Complete more than five Berlin Airlifts
Republican crazy talk on Iraq is so normal, so expected, that it's no longer major news when McCain promises that it will take twice as much time to achieve our goals in Iraq than it did in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
And heck, if we think that McCain's planning and knowledge of Iraq is as proportionately inaccurate as Donald Rumsfeld's (a safe bet), then he'll have us in there for 60 years.
* Data source
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