Richard WarnickWhen do the 100 years of safe occupation begin?
In case you missed it, yesterday Chris Matthews and guest Jon Soltz of VoteVets delivered some serious hardball. The hapless victim was an Iraq “surge” advocate and McCain supporter, Vets for Freedom Executive Director Pete Hegseth. Matthews got visibly irritated at Hegseth’s dishonest GOP talking points.
The key exchange went like this:
Matthews: “John McCain says we will stay there 100 years without getting shot at. When does that commence?”
Hegseth: “That’s if we have an Iraqi government that can do the vast majority of the fighting out front.”
Matthews: “Well, when does this 100 years begin?”
Hegseth: “It’s already begun. And 100 years — that statement is misconstrued over and over and over again.”
Matthews: “No, that’s not what he said. Jon, you do it. He said 100 without casualties. I’m just wondering when we start not getting casualties.”
[Hegseth bows his head and snickers.]
Matthews: “That’s not funny.”
Hegseth: “No, it’s not. But it’s not talking about leaving without any casualties.”
Matthews: “He said no casualties, no wounded, no KIA.”
UPDATE: Rick Hertzberg in The New Yorker lays out McCain’s 100-year Iraq plan like this:
McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal—that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we’ll stay.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:29 am
I thought we were already at least five years in, but what do I know. OR: Like the definition of ‘recession’ (three consecutive quarters with such and so a growth level), I imagine that after a sufficiently suitable period with no casualties, the hunnert years will begin to tick. Kens’ children may be grand-parents by then but…
The part they keep from us is that; at the end of the ‘hundred years’, we’ll have to let ‘them’ invade and occupy us. That’s the deal. I wish they’d been up front with us, but sadly, they were not.
McCain doesn’t even have a teeny tiny clue.(but he’ll get the vote. Watch)
April 8th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Job security for the MIC(military industrial complex). It is a breathtaking wonder that Americans stand for it. Here we had as a nation stood toe to toe with the Soviet Union for 55 years. A country of then 300 million peoples. They armed with ICBMs, 50k tanks, 10 million men in their military, sophisticated ships, subs, missiles of every description, yet we stood them down.
Now we are in grave peril from an enemy, toasterless, that will take at least 100 years to subdue. Yes, the great scourge that is borne on the backs of old machine guns and buried bombs in a country of 25 million, that does not even manufacture a toaster, will take 100 years to conquer.
WTF America? Have we become to stupid to live? NOBODY, obama, hildy, mccain even touches this, they just skate. It almost time to dropout again.