[Since you've taken it upon youself to disagree with the Generals assesment on the number of tropps needed, would you give us some credentials of your own?]
No military experience. But I've been in some fights. And no matter the fight, I always wanted more of my own guys around. Common sense, no?
It's common police practice, as well, during riots and large scale demonstrations. Flood the zone with good guys and the bad guys can't do their bad deeds. See today's headlines from france and mexico.
I do want to reiterate a point that I think you might be hitting on. I'm not opposed to the generals. I'm very sympathetic to them and want them to win. And I don't think this is the generals' fault. See, the generals know that even if they did ask for more troops, there aren't any to send.
That returns to my original point, which you can find in my first post on this subject, that nobody has challenged: Our military is too small. The RIFs of the 1990s gutted hundreds of thousands of combat-experienced troops (Panama, DS/DS, Somalia). We should have begun rebuilding the day after our President took office. We did not, and that was a mistake. A mistake that still haunts us today. A mistake that Colin Powell predicted in his 1994 Quadrennial Defense Review. I presume Colin Powell has the proper military credentials to satisfy you?
Whose fault is this mistake? People can blame Klinton or Bush or Rumsfeld or even the elder Bush. I don't care whose fault it is. I just want to fix the problem.
It could get much, much, much worse. For instance, it would be a disaster if NoKo went south, and the ChiComms decided to cross the blue ink on the map, and King chavez of venezoola cut off the oil and sent his troops to support little evil morales of bolivia if he decided to go westward into Chile and no longer be a landlocked country. And if chavez decides to start really funding and supplying the FARC in Colombia. And then Iran cuts off the oil. And al qaeda and the tali-whackers overthrow Musharaff in Pakistan and take control of the nukes...
Any of these things could be a disaster. All of these things could happen tomorrow. All of these would need large quantities of American troops to correct. Troops that we don't have.
I see the above statement by you as a concession to the Generals who say we have enough troops in Iraq.
It seems to me they are looking at the big picture, factoring in the resources (number of troops available) taking into account the scenarios you've listed, and more.
The resulting number is equal to the number of troops we now have in Iraq.
While you are wailing about 'not enough troops' they are facing up to the facts as they exist.