David Corn: A Mess in Iraq....A Mess in Phoenix

Today on NPR's Diane Rehm Show, Colonel Thomas Hammes, who is retiring from the USMC and the author of The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century, noted that the average modern-day insurgency lasts 10 to 15 years and that the longer insurgencies exist for about three decades. Now, when did anyone in the Bush administration mention that fact to the American public or note what that means for the United States in terms of the lives and money that are to be expended in Iraq? Answer: never. And it's not that the current predicament was unpredicted. Before the war, I asked a Navy admiral how long US troops would have to remain in Iraq. He said, "Two words: South Korea."