A Colonel's Quote

[Creek Kid]

In a time of so much talk of impending doom & gloom, I found some reasurance in this excerpt from an interview w/Col. Hackworth. See below:

MODERATOR at 2:46 p.m. ET
Col. Hackworth, thanks for joining us. Do you have any final thoughts on the current conflict?

COL. DAVID HACKWORTH at 2:47 p.m. ET
Yes I do. I probably talk to 15 million to 20 million Americans daily around the nation on radio shows. I sense that so many young Americans are really frightened. This is their first war and that's understandable.

But we have to remember that what the terrorist is trying to achieve is fear. So I want to put this in perspective. Can we win this war?

If we go back to Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese launched their surprise attack against us at Pearl Harbor, our nation instantly lost its fleet. It didn't have an army. The few soldiers that it had were running around with wooden rifles saying "bang, bang." And the aircraft we had were World War I biplanes that used flower bags for bombs.

The Japanese controlled the Pacific, from China right across to the Aleutian Islands by Alaska. The Nazis controlled all of Europe, were knocking on the gates of Stalingrad, and controlled most of Africa. The only guys left in the world to fight these monsters were the United States and the good folks in the British Isles.

We picked ourselves up from the dust and rubble and we whipped them. And they were not a few thousand terrorists embedded like termites under rocks around the world. They were a 15 million man army that we were opposing that had the best equipment and lots of lots of combat experience. But we whipped them.

So taking on a few thousand terrorists is a piece of cake. As long as we hang in there and give them the kind of support we're giving them now, then we're gonna win this sucker!