WEDNESDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK (via Glenn Dryfoos):

"SLOW" WAR NOTE (Gregg Easterbrook, New Republic)

U.S. forces have now passed Karbala Gap, which Best Laid Plans considered the biggest obstacle before Baghdad itself. Most of a country the size of California has now been seized in 13 days, with fewer than 50 dead on our side and an unknown but probably relatively low number of civilian dead. Why isn't this happening faster! As Max Boot of the Council of Foreign Relations (McCaffrey belongs to the CFR too, another thing the Pentagon disliked about him) points out in today's Financial Times, in 1940 the German attack on France cost the Werhmacht 27,000 dead, and this assault is gobbling up more ground more rapidly.

Why people keep saying events are occurring too slowly--speeding up would surely mean more civilian deaths!--is incomprehensible. Can't we at least wait till the third week before we lose heart? Also, bear in mind that the Iraqi military may still collapse and the U.S. side may still take mass surrenders; there is still plenty of time for this to happen and to happen very quickly by the standards of combat.

Doesn't he know he missed a chance to denigrate Don Rumsfeld? Posted by Orrin Judd at April 4, 2003 3:31 PM