‘Every four years, the Pentagon
releases its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), more accurately the Quadrennial
Defense Rubberstamp. Usually, it offers the same, more of the same or less of
the same. That is true of this QDR as well, with one interesting exception.
Perhaps uniquely in the annals of strategic planning, this QDR promises
strategic failure a priori. It puts that promise right up front, in its
first sentence, which reads, "The United States is a nation engaged in
what will be a long war." 

Long wars are usually strategic
disasters for winners as well as losers, because they leave all parties
exhausted. If they work to anyone’s advantage, it tends to be the weaker
party’s, because its alternative is rapid defeat. The Rumsfeld Pentagon certainly
does not see the United States as the weaker party in its "Global War on
Terrorism."

So why has it adopted a long-war
strategy, or more accurately lack of strategy, unless one sees national
exhaustion as a plus?’

The Long War

From Aljazeera
Saddam 'warned US of terror risk'
Thursday 16 February 2006, 6:40 Makka Time, 3:40 GMT
Saddam Hussein told aides in the mid-1990s that he warned the United States it could be hit by a terrorist attack, ABC News has reported, citing 12 hours of tapes the network obtained of the Iraqi leader's talks with his cabinet.
One of Saddam's son-in-laws also said that Iraq hid its biological weapons programmes from UN inspectors, according to the tapes from August 1995, the television network reported on Wednesday.

The terrorist attack Saddam predicted could involve weapons of mass destruction. "Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans," Saddam is heard saying, adding that he "told the British as well". "In the future, what would prevent a booby-trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?" Saddam said. But he said Iraq would never carry out such an attack.

From the BBC

Planning the US 'Long War' on terror
By James Westhead
BBC News, Washington

It sounds eerily like the Cold War - and that is no mistake.

The "Long War" is the name Washington is using to rebrand the new world conflict, this time against terrorism.

Now the US military is revealing details of how it is planning to fight this very different type of war.

It is also preparing the public for a global conflict which it believes will dominate the next 20 years.

The nerve centre of this war against terror is the huge MacDill airbase in Tampa, Florida.

Read more at the BBC
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Gus is impressed
Business is booming... making little bombs that go boom... as one newspaper headline says today: since 9/11, it's the gloom boom... A Dill of an idea, but then... who am I to think peace kills less people? A long war for a president still in nappies? Planning for other presidents to be roped in by a continuum of profitable murderous stupidity? or is it pure sadism on a global scale?