[Chi-townChief]

Does it seem like Colin has been all over the map on this one?

[NorthEastRepublican]

Ok Colin go away. Anyone that says we needed more troops is stupid. More troops will nt prevent some idiot from blwoing himself up. If we were facing an organized army then yes more troops would be beneficial. But in this case no. Rumsfeld's shock ans awe campaigns did in 3 weeks wat the Soviet Union could not do in 7 years in Afghanistan and took down a fair powerful army in 3 weeks in Iraq. Rummy is a GREAT Defense Sec. It was Powell that screwed us.

[Cobra64]

Powell sounds more and more like Jimmah. If I were W, I'd retire him.

[Tarpon]

I say thanks Colin, you explain why Condee Rice is a much better secretary of state. Nice to have a doer in the job instead of a loafer.

[smoothsailing]

"Either he got rid of them quickly or Saddam Hussein might have thought he had them," Powell said."We don't know".

I'll take number 1. Although he didn't need to get rid of them "quickly", Jay Rockefeller gave him a head start and our "rush to war" was many months in the making. More like a slow waltz.

[Cenobite]

Truthfully, there has always been mistakes in war. The mistake General Powell and other are making is refighting the last war. And General Powell's last war was Gulf War I. In wich we had one of the most massive build-ups of troops since World War II. Also, please note that the field commander of that war, General Swartzkopf has been very low profile and that is they way it should be once you have left or retired.

[Marine_Uncle]

Powell, Bremmer and others seem to have less of the frigen facts many of us Freepers have gained over the past few years. I wonder if he is even aware of those 2 million pieces of things our guys are sorting, cataloging, analysising in those Qatar warehouses. The books will be written by those like Hayes. I believe a lot of these high focus people really do not get absorbed in the fine details, only surface details handed to them. And they probably do not retain what they where told a few years back. As for not enough troops. We could have had a million men on the ground and it would not have prevented the insurgency from developing.

[solzhenitsyn]

It wasn't anyone's "mistake" that we didn't have the 4th Infantry Division going into Iraq. That was the treachery of the Turks. Things might have gone much differently if the 4ID had been there. But no honest person can blame that on President Bush or anyone in this country.

[glorgau]

We have the Turks to thank for the absence of the 4th Infantry division.

[A.A. Cunningham]

Powell admits errors in war

You mean your errors in 1991, right Colon.

[Wiz]

Even if we had more troops, we also needed more armored vehicles likely unavailible at that time. Number of the troops was not the only factor.

[tkathy]

A war is not like some cutsey little sitcom, with a perfect ending. The WOT was not perfect, human errors were made, but that's the way with all wars. It is better to learn and then move on instead of endless whining.

[verity]

The mistake in Iraq was not that the U.S. invaded, he said. It was that "we didn'thave enough troops to take control on the ground''kill enough people during the 'shock and awe' phase.