Weekly Comments Archive
Archived Issue
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
ISSUE #401
Will looks back 3 years in Iraq

# 401, March 21, 2006

COLUMBUS: All I know is what I read in the newspaper, and this week everybody is writing about the war in Iraq, except when that pretty blond teacher avoided jail. Columnists are giving their opinions, and the journalists are giving theirs. With all these opinions it makes you wonder who’s reporting the facts.

Some of these writers dug up what they had written three years ago at the start of the war, and admitted they didn’t understand Iraq any better than the President.

I decided to go back myself and dust off the old computer files. Here are a few of my comments from March 2003.

(March 6, 2003) I have sworn off predicting the start of wars. I’m 0 for 2 on this one. From here on, I’ll leave it up to Mr. Bush. He’s one man that don’t have to predict, he can just announce.

(March 25) Gasoline prices are coming down. Last week $1.70, today $1.42. Forget what Mr. Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks are telling you. The best gauge of how the war is going is gas prices. Gas prices and Wall Street… In Washington, the Senate cut the President’s tax cut in half. They will only let us have $350 Billion of our money back. Mr. Bush says we need the entire $700 Billion tax cut for the country to recover… The Senate said they need the $350 Billion to pay for the war. Mr. Rumsfeld figures he needs no more than $100 Billion. So don’t be surprised if the final budget bill includes $100 Billion for Rumsfeld and $250 Billion for our various Congressional Districts, mainly to build armor plated pork barrels….I just heard we knocked Iraqi television off the air without blowing up the station. Now there’s some technology that can come in handy the next time one of those Survivor shows comes on.

(March 31) For a while last week the war was going pretty smooth; gasoline dropped to $1.30. But tonight it was back up to $1.60, so perhaps our optimism was a bit too high. We watch this war too much like a basketball game, where our whole disposition changes in an instant depending on who has the ball and who scored last. These folks saying the war should have been over in a week are the same ones that yelled at their microwave because it took more than two minutes to cook supper. Give the Generals a chance to make a few mistakes, on both sides, and just wait and see who adjusts the best. The diplomats had this war all to themselves for 12 years, and you see what a mess they made of it. You can’t expect the Marines to clean it up in 12 days.

That was 2003. Let’s hope we’re arguing over a different topic in 2009.

       Yours,
“Will”

Historic quotes:

“You can have all the advanced war methods you want, but, after all, nobody has ever invented a war that you dident have to have somebody in the guise of Soldiers to stop the bullets.” Saturday Evening Post, May 12, 1928

“You can’t say civilization don’t advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.” DT #1063, Dec. 22, 1929

“People have just got to get more used to debt. Let’s all let the fellow we owe do the worrying and the U. S. will be the happiest land on earth.” DT #2421, May 7, 1934

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