Harlan Ullman

Harlan Ullman is a senior adviser with the Center for Stragic and International Studies --- a distinguished reputation. His expertise spans national security, foreign policy, terror, defense, economics, and finance as well as Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. He is a columnist for the. Washington Times. An honors graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Ullman completed more than 150 combat missions and patrols in Vietnam in Swift Boats and later commanded a destroyer in the Persian Gulf. With a Ph.D. in international affairs, finance, and economics, he has been an academic and businessman as well as an adviser to the most senior levels of government and the private sector. (All from their website.)

Sounds very good. Is very good.

But I heard him talk the other day at the New America Foundation an eclectic and interesting think tank.

He said, roughly, that Iraq is the greatest castastrophe in America history.

Huh?

Think Civil War. The bloodiest miltary contest to that time.

Lincoln --- called an ape and an ignoramus --- kept switiching generals until he found a drunk --- Ulysses S. Grant. He ordered William Tecumseh Sherman to march from Atlanta to ocean. Retrospectively, they were called genociadal. Sherman torched and pillaged everything he could find. ("Gone With The Wind"). The prisons, on both sides, were festering hellholes.

Union troops were probably not as bad, but plenty bad.

U.S. Grant became President. He wrote what is considered the best of Presidential Memoirs. (With Mark Twain's help.)

Gettysburgh, Shilo, Bull Run --- dripped with blood.

Father Abraham is worshipped by most Americans. He may have been our greatest writer.

The number of American troops killed in Iraq is about 2,500 --- fewer than were killed at the WTC attacks. The troops are all volunteers.

Iraq is worse than the Civil War?

Ben