When the Going Gets Tough, the War Keeps Going

"We'll win the war."

"We're not going to win the war."

The Pentagon says it will take 10 years before we can turn it around.

We shouldn't have gotten into Iraq in the first place.

What are we still doing there?

If we had to do it all over again, should we do it all over again?

The people who were in charge of the Defense Department are no longer there.

They all have cushy jobs outside the government. And why does Donald Rumsfeld keep showing up in the newspapers when he is no longer defense secretary?

And why, when he shows up, does he keep explaining to the American people what a good job he did and was still doing until President Bush told him he couldn't do it anymore?

The president has 10 wise men he keeps talking to about what to do in Iraq.

He holds a course, changes the course, and when things really get rough, he goes down to Crawford, Tex., and cuts brush on his ranch.

To make things even worse, there's Syria and Iran. We're not sure why this is so, but they're as bad as North Korea.

The big question is, why did the ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, resign at this very moment, when we needed him? If he were that important, why did Bush let him resign?

It's going to be a long Christmas. There are differences between the reserves and the regular troops, but there is no out for either of them.

The Army generals can't bring the troops home and the Marine generals can't do the job with what they've got. And the Sunnis and Shiites still don't like each other.

It's a very hard thing to explain to GIs. It's even harder to explain to people in the State Department.

A lot of people say a lot of things, which doesn't make what they say true.

2006Tribune Media Services