Iraq civil war? Iraq a "powder keg"? Gee who woulda thunk...

[LynnTheDem]

President GHW Bush, 1998;

"Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."
http://www.rense.com/general43/quote.htm

Col. David Hackworth

"Should the president decide to stay the war course, hopefully at least a few of our serving top-uniformed leaders - those who are now covertly leaking that war with Iraq will be an unparalleled disaster - will do what many Vietnam-era generals wish they would have done: stand tall and publicly tell the America people the truth about another bad war that could well lead to another died-in-vain black wall. Or even worse."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29786

James Webb, former Sec. of Navy under Ronald Reagan, Decorated Marine Veteran:

"Do we really want to occupy Iraq for the next 30 years? …In Japan, American occupation forces quickly became 50,000 friends. In Iraq, they would quickly become 50,000 terrorist targets…. Nations such as China can only view the prospect of an American military consumed for the next generation by the turmoil of the Middle East as a glorious windfall."
http://www.sftt.org/article09302002a.html

Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former Head of Central Command for U.S.:

"It's pretty interesting that all the generals see it the same way, and all the others who have never fired a shot, and are hot to go to war, see it another… We are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever started."

Hawks in the Bush administration may be making deadly miscalculations on Iraq, says Gen. Anthony Zinni, Bush's Middle East envoy.

"I'm not sure which planet they live on"
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/10/17/zinni

Republican Dissent on Iraq
Full page ad in Wall Street Journal by major GOP contributors:

"Mr. President, …The candidate we supported in 2000 promised a more humble nation in our dealings with the world. We gave him our votes and our campaign contributions. That candidate was you. We feel betrayed. We want our money back. We want our country back…. A Billion Bitter enemies will rise out of this war."
- Wall Street Journal, January 13, 2003
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/001444.html

Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency:

"Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends…. I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defense and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaeda. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091704Y.shtml

Retired General Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command:

"The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091704Y.shtml

Col. Mike Turner (ret), Schwarzkopf's personal briefing officer during Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm:

“The uniformed Joint Staff in the Pentagon strongly opposed this plan early on...The uniformed Joint Staff was overridden, yet in so many horrifying ways this operation resembles Somalia, not Desert Storm...Perhaps we can pull this off, but here's a far worse scenario that's at least as likely...Photos of American soldiers amid landscapes of Iraqi civilian bodies blanket the world press which aligns unanimously against the US. The US is condemned by NATO and the UN...The war ends within a few weeks, but the crisis deepens...”
http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/transcripts/2003/mar/030311.turner.html

Republican senator Chuck Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee;

"No, I don't think we're winning," Hagel told a CBS interviewer. "We're in trouble, we're in deep trouble in Iraq."
http://www.iht.com/articles/539563.htm

Yes, we are indeed in deep trouble. And we will be for a very long time to come. And the entire world, including 50% of Americans, warned you so.

More links at;

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3135341