THE NEXT ONE WILL BE BETTER, HONEST!
Jul. 18th, 2003 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmdhttp://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-na-postwar18jul18,1,7035725.story?coll=la-home-headlines is an article about post-war-planning fuckups... and here's the bit at the end.
Still, [Douglas J. Feith, #3 official at the Pentagon] and other Pentagon officials said, they are studying the lessons of Iraq closely --- to ensure that the next U.S. takeover of a foreign country goes more smoothly.
"We're going to get better over time," promised Lawrence Di Rita, a special assistant to Rumsfeld. "We've always thought of post-hostilities as a phase" distinct from combat, he said. "The future of war is that these things are going to be much more of a continuum....
"This is the future for the world we're in at the moment," he said. "We'll get better as we do it more often."
Still, [Douglas J. Feith, #3 official at the Pentagon] and other Pentagon officials said, they are studying the lessons of Iraq closely --- to ensure that the next U.S. takeover of a foreign country goes more smoothly.
"We're going to get better over time," promised Lawrence Di Rita, a special assistant to Rumsfeld. "We've always thought of post-hostilities as a phase" distinct from combat, he said. "The future of war is that these things are going to be much more of a continuum....
"This is the future for the world we're in at the moment," he said. "We'll get better as we do it more often."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-07-19 10:09 am (UTC)On the other hand, it /is/ sort of the military's job to view their past efforts (especially most recent ones) and to actively work on plans to improve their performance 'the next time'. I think in the current situation with our current leadership, the man's words have a more chilling ring than is necessarily intended. The military is always running on the assumption that some day they'll actually have to employ the training and research and improvements that they work on. They need to run on that assumption, otherwise there's no way for them to be effective in their efforts to become better at what they do.
With Bush in the oval office, I sadly think it not entirely unlikely that 'the next time' will be in the not too distant future, but I don't necessarily think this fellow is meaning to say 'so, next week, when we roll out to take over our next country, we'll be doing things a lot more smoothly'.