Rumsfeld time capsule, April 29: "There were a lot of hand-wringers..."

[Minstrel Boy]

Jubilant Rumsfeld takes a swipe at critics
(Filed: 29/04/2003)
Never have so many been so wrong about so much, says defence chief.

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, yesterday allowed himself the luxury of mocking his many critics who predicted a long, bloody war in Iraq.

"There were a lot of hand-wringers around, weren't there?" he told cheering troops at the coalition military headquarters in Qatar.

Though the war has not been declared officially ended, a beaming Mr Rumsfeld congratulated coalition commanders and predicted that future historians would regard the Iraqi action as a model conflict.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/29/weur229.xml

Rumsfeld reminds me of these words from an open letter to Bush by Paulo Coelho, written on the eve of the invasion:

Now that there seems no way of silencing the drums of war, I would like to say, as an ancient European king said to an invader: ‘May your morning be a beautiful one, may the sun shine on your soldiers’ armour, for in the afternoon, I will defeat you.’
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-88-1033.jsp