[Steel Wolf]

I hate to say it, but you're probably right. Our troops and organization are so much better than the insurgents that the comparison is off the charts. But no matter how invincible we are in direct combat, our lack of presence emboldened the terrorists. If we had more troops, we could have done aggressive presence patrolling and stamped out our problems early on. The situation we have now is the invincible cavalry riding in after the situation is already out of control.

Sure, we do win when we show up, but we surrender every problem that's not immediately in a crisis state in hopes of not making the problem worse. Which they invariably do. Our military strategy for defeating the Iraqi army was magnificent; it was truly a masterpiece. As far as planning for and combating the insurgency, it was a monument to our own short sightedness and stubbornness.

What we should have done is kept the Iraqi army intact, written and imposed a new constitution onto the Iraqis, and conducted a phased 'de Baathification' over the course of a few years. Instead, we pushed the Iraqis into a 'sink or swim' situation in which they're barely dog paddling. I think that we will win, and that the Iraqis will get their act together, but that we cut it much closer than we needed to. Bottom line; I don't really care for Powell, but he does have some valid points.

[jmc1969]

The Anbar campaign we have been fighting for the past year that Bill Roggio detailed quite well has damaged the insurgency badly. But, you are right that we didn't have enough US troops to seed Anbar as we have been able to slowly do over the past year only because we have been getting more Iraqi troops online.

So, I don't think the big mistake was the number of US troops, I believe the fact they planned on a very tiny 60,000 man strong Iraqi Army for the first year of the war was the big mistake.