{"id":8236,"date":"2006-08-18T10:54:40","date_gmt":"2006-08-18T14:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8236.html"},"modified":"2006-08-18T10:54:40","modified_gmt":"2006-08-18T14:54:40","slug":"interesting-historical-factoid-of-the-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/interesting-historical-factoid-of-the-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Interesting historical factoid of the day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reader <a href=\"http:\/\/last1000days.blogspot.com\/2006\/08\/893-only-operation-is-fuzzy-not-math.html\">R.G.<\/a> emails an interesting tidbit about the length of the war in Iraq.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>December 7, 1941 (attack on Peal Harbor) to May 8, 1945 (VE-Day) was 1,248 days.<\/p>\n<p>March 19, 2003 (U.S. launches invasion of Iraq) to today is also 1,248 days.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now, one could quibble a bit about the length of World War II, which was underway before December 1941, and didn&#8217;t really end until Japan surrendered a few months after VE-Day.<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s not really the point. Think about when Donald Rumsfeld <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/world\/iraq\/2003-03-31-then-and-now-usat_x.htm\">said<\/a>, in February 2003, &#8220;It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.&#8221; If someone had said then that the war would still be ongoing, with no end in sight, for a duration longer than World War II, the Bush gang would have laughed out loud (or, if the person worked for the administration, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3271.html\">fired<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>The same goes for Dick Cheney, who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/AccountTempFiles\/cf\/%7BE9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521-5D6FF2E06E03%7D\/PRIRAQCLAIMFACT1029.HTM\">said<\/a> in March 2003, &#8220;We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators&#8230;. I think it will go relatively quickly&#8230; (in) weeks rather than months.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>To be fair, Rumsfeld and Cheney would probably respond that they were only referring to &#8220;major combat operations,&#8221; which ended when &#8220;Mission Accomplished&#8221; was declared in 2003.<\/p>\n<p>Given what we&#8217;ve seen since then, it&#8217;s not a wholly satisfying answer, is it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reader R.G. emails an interesting tidbit about the length of the war in Iraq. December 7, 1941 (attack on Peal Harbor) to May 8, 1945 (VE-Day) was 1,248 days. March 19, 2003 (U.S. launches invasion of Iraq) to today is also 1,248 days. Now, one could quibble a bit about the length of World War [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}