"Easy" War

More on the Administration's deceptive talk of an easy war. It's clear to me that it wasn't a case of just misleading the public, but a much more serious case of self-deception. It is very dangerous to practice such a game - life-wasting defeats, the stuff of history books, are born here. I can only hope that Rumsfeld et al. will accept the bad news with grace, and correct their errors, before we experience much more shock and awe (of the sort generated by the Iraqi regime).

Still, it's hard not to get mad at the media's easy compliance with defeatism. I particularly remember Judy Woodruff on CNN, on Monday I believe, the day when the news was sinking in about the capture of the 12 American soldiers from Ft. Bliss, TX. Woodruff announced that it was a very bad day for Coalition forces, when, in fact, the forces were in great shape, racing for Baghdad. Woodruff mistook the PR battle rattling around her head at CNN, the talk-talk war, for the real battle in Mesopotamia. Perhaps stupid of her, and annoying. But maybe she has a point after all - Clausewitz's old saw about war being just politics carried out with different means remains just as true as ever. If Hussein can out-psyche her, so much the better for his forces.