it moved away, then closed up again…and Kerry seems to have momentum with 6 days to go:
-see zogby/rasmussen/washington post numbers here:
nowchannel.com/tracking/
and this:
And a quote off Daily Kos:
Listen to what Ronald Reagan’s former Sec. of the Navy has to say about Iraq and the way it has been prosecuted, etc.::::::
MATTHEWS: If you look down the road, do you see more of a manpower, rather a person power challenge facing us as we have all these different needs in the world with regard to South Korea, of course, defending against the potential nuclear development in the North? We have got the Iranian situation. We have got the Middle East. All these possibilities. Do we have a big enough Army?
WEBB: I would start from the other end of that. I would say yes, you may end up seeing problems, particularly in the Guard and reserve, where this is a second career.
But the starting point is the move into Iraq, separate all the political considerations aside, was a strategic blunder. And for us to have such a high percentage of our military tied down in essentially occupying and attempting to reconstruct a society of a nation is a very bad idea. And it absorbs people. And it not only absorb people when you think about enlistments and this sort of thing, it absorbs people from other areas around the world, so that we can`t pay proper attention to security concerns elsewhere.
MATTHEWS: Why do our leaders, starting with the president down, why did they not expect nationalistic resistance to an occupation in Iraq, when our whole history of the world tells us, expect people to resist occupation?
WEBB: You know, the sad thing is, there`s not a thing that has occurred in Iraq that was not only predictable but predicted. And predicted with good military advice to this administration.
MATTHEWS: Did ideology overwhelm military history here? Is that why we went in with such confidence?
WEBB: My view of it, when Vice President Cheney repeatedly says that the people who have questioned the war against Iraq don`t understand the post-9/11 world, my view is the complete reverse. The people who did this, this was on their to-do list when they got into the administration, and they did not…
MATTHEWS: Cheney?
WEBB: Cheney and the whole group that really put this together. They wanted this as a part of what was going to happen in the Bush administration. One way or the other, they were waiting for…
MATTHEWS: That`s why they joined, you could argue.
WEBB: And in my view, these people don`t understand the realities post-9/11. Post-9/11, this was a bad idea. Pre-9/11, I still would have opposed it, but at least it was an arguable idea.
MATTHEWS: Because–why is it more of a bad idea now since 9/11?
WEBB: Because international terrorism really moved in a dramatic way from a regional problem to a global problem. We saw that we had to step to the forefront. We had all the nations of the world with us after 9/11. And we systematically alienated a huge percentage of the world at a time we needed their cooperation. We tied down our military in static positions when we had developed, for 10 or 15 years, we had worked on a maneuverable military. And now we dumped them into static positions. So it is a bad idea in terms of international politics, a bad idea in terms of grand strategy, and a bad idea in how to use the military.
MATTHEWS: Did we dare the Arab world to take us on in Iraq? The young men of the Arab world? Did we say, go ahead, make our day, go ahead, step up to the plate, you got it?
WEBB: Clearly, it was the inevitable consequences of anyone who thought this through.
MATTHEWS: Like bring it on. That`s what the president said. And they did.
WEBB: And well, I think that by putting our people in Iraq, we certainly made them targets in a way that they wouldn`t have been if we were fighting the war against international terrorism from a position to maneuver.
Read entire transcript:::::::
msnbc.msn.com/id/6344305/
:loco: