Well, Duh!

An editorial from the NY Daily News - Straight shooting from Rumsfeld:

Well, certainly Iraq is going to be a "long, hard slog." This is a shocking disclosure? Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been saying exactly this all along. Anybody who thinks he has ever suggested otherwise hasn't been listening.

Still, the bluntness of an internal memo, apparently leaked by some Pentagon unfriendly to embarrass Rumsfeld, is bound to bring aid and comfort to those souls - Democratic presidential candidates and others - who wish desperately to believe that the U.S. intervention in Iraq has been built of smoke and doublespeak and flat-out lies.

There's been nothing of the sort, of course, and the plain-talking Rumsfeld need feel no embarrassment. Out-loud acknowledgment of a "long, hard slog" is nothing more and nothing less than a reaffirmation that the good guys are in this thing for the duration - until they don't need to be there anymore.

And that has been said all along, as well.

It isn't that they haven't been listening - it's that they're lying asshats.