[ARCADIA]

Who didn't anticipate the strength of the insurgency? It's no stronger than I anticipated it would be.

The war planners - they were thinking of bringing the troop number to 30,000 two months after "mission accomplished"

[Dr. Frank fan]

[Who didn't anticipate the strength of the insurgency? It's no stronger than I anticipated it would be.] The war planners - they were thinking of bringing the troop number to 30,000 two months after "mission accomplished"

First of all (not that I necessarily doubt you), which "war planners"? "The"? All of them? Do you have a link?

Second: "thinking of"? Ok, well, I was thinking of winning the lottery. Didn't happen. Big deal. When it transpired that I didn't win the lottery, I made life decisions accordingly. When it transpired that it didn't make sense to reduce the troop # to 30000 (if indeed "the" war planners ever seriously entertained such an idea), they didn't.

The point?

[Dr. Frank fan]

BTW, *my* point is that it's frivolous to point to these logistical and tactical issues and call them 'mistakes', as if there has EVER been a war in which one side or the other didn't regularly make such 'mistakes'. The bottom line is, whatever they were "thinking of", in reality, they never did reduce the troop #'s to 30000, did they? So even if you consider that contingency-plan a 'mistake', it never happened thus had no effect. They adjusted.

All grownups should understand that this is what war is, you know, like. The nature of war is such that there is an enemy working against your wishes. This idea that you can "calculate" (by computer?) precisely what should be done, and get the "right answers", and then the war goes perfectly - the only word that comes to mind is, infantile.