WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 (UPI) -- The success of insurgent attacks in Iraq indicates the U.S. effort could take years to complete before handing security control to Iraqi forces.
More than 200 people were killed in attacks this week in Iraq by an insurgency U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney last spring characterized as being in its "last throes."
The administration quickly changed that tune. In June, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said: "Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years. Coalition forces, foreign forces are not going to repress that insurgency. We're going to create an environment that (allows) the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency."
Seth Jones, a terror expert with the RAND Corp., told The Christian Science Monitor: "There has been a clear realization that this war is not winnable in the short term."
The Monitor said the Bush administration's supposition that political gains in Iraq would quell the insurgency has also been proven wrong and only when the militants sense a military advantage truly going to the Iraqi government will the insurgency lose steam.
