THE GAMBLE

Just when you thought it was safer in the Middle-East...

We're all gonna have to embrace (handshake, full-hug or bro-hug, your choice) the fact that W.'s legacy will be rearing its supremely ugly head for many more years to come. W. "we-wannem-dead-or-alive," Cheney "we'll-be-greeted-as-liberators," Wolfowitz "this-war-will-cost-$60-billion-and-the-Iraqi-oil-profits-will-pay-for-it," and Rumsfeld, "step-back-Jack, I've-got-a-Daisy-Cutter," created this mis-adventurous fiasco and we'll be paying for it in American blood and treasure for a generation or more. 

These four men not only failed miserably in their misguided approach to Iraq and Afghanistan, but they are directly responsible for making the U.S. far less safer by allowing Al Qaeda to poise itself upon the precipice of a major goal: taking power in (a nuclear armed) Pakistan. There is no great mystery or a big surprise of how this happened. Simply put, the Bush administration's monumental arrogance and stupendous stupidity created this expanding and widening war and it will take a generation or more to clean up their mess.

Tom Ricks, author of "Fiasco," has proven time and time again that he's got the knowledge and perspective to grasp, as best as possible, the reality on the ground in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ricks' new book, "The Gamble" should be a great read regarding the most troubling (and most bungled) foreign-policy matter of our time.

Thanks W.! 

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FURTHER READING AND OTHER RESOURCES:

"No End In Sight To The Iraq 'Gamble,'" an interview with Tom Ricks on "Fresh Air"

> Click here to listen to the Fresh Air interview now. <

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JUST FOR FUN...

the I•P would like to share just one of former Secretary Defense Donald Rumsfeld's quotes from when he was the top dog on all things war:

"Now what is the message there? The message is that there are known "knowns." There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns."

-Press Conference at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium, June 6, 2002