A struggle that will outlast all of us

Condi and Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer visited Camp Pendleton yesterday, where she told the troops that they might “wonder if we are having the success that we should be having” and then, I guess, told them no: “It’s going to be a struggle that will outlast all of us.” (I’d like more context on this, but I can’t find a transcript at the famously unhelpful State Department website.)


Condi and Downer (that just sounds funny) watched Iraq-bound Marines training in a mock city (which I presume to mean a fake Iraqi city, as opposed to a city that mocks you, like Paris). Downer spouted afterwards about the Marines’ “sensitivity to human rights,” adding “I was impressed with their compassion.” Evidently no one explained to him that he was in California, not Iraq, that the exercise wasn’t real and that the “civilians” the Marines showed such sensitivity and compassion to were in fact actors.

Condi was also interviewed by Fox. She said about the Middle East: “a lot of the responsible parties in the region are beginning to see that their great threat comes from extremism, not from the Israel-Palestinian conflict.” Well, that’s okay, then.

Alert reader Josh Narins emailed me the one war metric that actually works: the more Bush appointees mention 9/11, the worse the war is going.

Pentagon press release: “The undersecretary of defense for intelligence will also now serve as the director of defense intelligence.”