Terry Garlock sees us as being led by the TV news seeking instant gratification and “Forgetting that the President told those unable to figure it out for themselves from the get-go this war would be a long and difficult struggle.” Although I was able to figure it out for myself, I don’t remember them telling us that. In fact, I remember quite the opposite.

Ken Adelman, director of arms control under President Ronald Reagan and now an assistant to Rumsfeld and a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board wrote an op-ed in Washington Post February 2002 in which he said, “I believe that demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.”

In November 2002 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the Iraq conflict would last, “Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that. It won’t be a World War III.”

At a town hall meeting at Aviano Air Base in February 2003 Secretary Rumsfeld said, “It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”

On “Meet the Press,” in March 2003 Vice-President Dick Cheney said, “I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.”

Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz predicted to Sen. Ernest F. Hollings within weeks of the 9/11 attack that the Iraq war would be over in seven days. He also predicted that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators with “rose petals.”

Mr. Garlock also decries the TV news for not reporting the good news from Iraq. He is right. The day that I read his editorial, I saw on the TV that 62 Iraqis had been massacred and tortured, their bodies left on the West Bank in Beirut. Another 30 or so had been killed in car bomb explosions in Iraq near Abu Ghraib with 47 wounded.

There was also a report about a classified military report from Col. Pete Devlin, the Marine intelligence chief in Iraq, which said that al Qaeda was now the dominant political force in Iraq’s Anbar province, and saying that we would need an additional 50 to 60 thousand troops to pacify Anbar province alone.

Another report was about an entire family that was killed in Beirut including the savage massacre of a 2-year-old baby. I didn’t watch Fox News that day so I missed all of the happy, happy news from the war.

Mr. Garlock also says that, “I get it that we sometimes behave like naive children, expecting our wars to be antiseptic, perfectly forecasted and choreographed with no setbacks or surprises or casualties, the actions and reactions of the populace and the enemy turning out exactly as predicted.”

He will no doubt be pleased to know that neither I nor any of my friends or acquaintances ever believed this. Does anybody know anyone even remotely approaching the level of naiveté of which Mr. Garlock accuses us?

This was followed by the lament from Mr. Garlock that “We insist that battles and enemy interrogations be conducted in strict accord with rules we cite from the comfort and safety of our living rooms with teacup balanced on our knee.”

I did get it! He’s referring to the Geneva Conventions, which were written mainly by the United States and carry the force of international law. They protect our military personnel and fortunately, today the Republican U.S. Senate voted to uphold these laws and refused to allow the Bush administration to sink even lower into the quagmire of torture.

We also read of our “breathtaking arrogance” because we have the audacity to express our opinions and disagree with the administration and the Secretary of Defense.

What I don’t get is this: is there a number of times that SecDef Rumsfeld could be proved wrong in his assumptions, actions and his public statements that, once surpassed, Mr. Garlock would be willing to consider that he should be removed from his job?

Or is it that there is no level of incompetence that can possibly be demonstrated by Mr. Rumsfeld that Mr. Garlock would not be willing to accept?

And if not, is there any circumstance possible under which it would be okay with Mr. Garlock that we “second-guess our officials” by “spouting” our opinions?

Then there is the “They” who “seem eager to help our enemy by opposing every tool the President tries to use. ...” including torture and wiretaps. I am not sure who he is referring to but I can only assume that he means Senator John McCain, former U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Vesse, General John Shalikashvili, Admiral Stansfield Turner, Lieutenant General Robert G. Gard, Jr., Major General John Batiste, Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy ... and the many others who, on Sept. 13, successfully urged Congress to reject President Bush’s attempts [to] legalize torture by downgrading Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

I may be wrong; he could be referring to the seditionist United States Supreme Court whose ruling in the Hamden case decimated the President’s warrantless eavesdropping program.

I am also in absolute and total agreement that the ordinary American is not sacrificing or even being affected by the war in Iraq and I join Mr. Garlock in decrying this situation.

Given Mr. Garlock’s foreign policy expertise as a financial planner, I would like to know this: would he support a tax increase, which might affect him, to pay for the war? Surely it is not too much to ask that we sacrifice a little to pay for our elective war instead of passing it on to our children?

And Mr. Garlock will be pleased that his conclusion is quite correct. I am not willing to give up my freedom of speech or any other freedoms. Not for the neo-conservative Republicans or for the terrorists.

Jeff Carter
Peachtree City, Ga.