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Well, not to belabor the point but that is not my point, at least not the concern I have regarding Rumsfeld's lighter, faster vision. The operations against Iraq were masterful. I am proud, truly so.

We have what it takes to defeat small to medium armies outright, and large non-technical armies in fairly short order, say 60-90 days. What about large, technological powers? Can we win against China? I don't think we can IF Rumsfeld totally transforms our military. He needs to save some of the old power to keep all our options open.

Case in point. The Air Force is often chided for not making ground air support its highest priority, and keeping air superiority its main focus. However, what those opponents fail to understand is that without air superiority, ground air support will happen, unfortunately by the enemy, not by us! Now in Afghanistan and Iraq, we didn't need to fight for air supremecy; we already had it. We could fly virtually anywhere we wanted and hit any target we needed to. In Afghanistan, fighters became roving artillery platforms at the beck and call of USAF ground combat teams on horseback riding with vast Uzbek and Afghani Northern Alliance armies.

This will not be how it goes if/when we face China. We'll have to sweep them from the skies, first. In recent excercises with our f-15's against India's Air Force, they bloodied our noses more than we care to admit. A future ground war may go badly, initially, while we fight in the air. We could see our ground troops without air support for the first time since WWII.

All I'm saying is don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Rumsfeld isn't perfect. Since he serves at the pleasure of the President, all detractors can go pound sand in my opinion. But it isn't as if no one had a good idea until Rumsfeld showed up.

Rumsfeld...He needs to save some of the old power to keep all our options open.

I have kept my comments regarding the specific strategic/tactical aspects of the GWOT to a minimum, since my fairly recent involvement with FR. But that is not to say that I haven't read with interest the many outstanding thoughts on this subject posted by you and others. Today is no exception.

I personally don't want to discuss specifics until Nov. 8th's results and their immediate implications are known. The Bush Administration and its supporters in the Congress have been the only game in town for those of us who have advocated -for decades- that widespread, and exceedingly violent military/naval activity must be initiated against certain elements in the Middle East. And I have felt that publicly criticizing the current effort would be used by the Left to weaken the nation's resolve. Obviously, I detest the actions of officers cut from the same bolt of cloth as Wesley Clark etc..

However, I will say that I wrote the President in Feb. 2002 to essentially state that the country must be got up onto a war footing, or we would surely suffer the same catastrophic division as evidenced in the Vietnam era. For reasons that must have been all too clear to realistic political operators like Dubya and Rumsfeld, my advice -as expected- was politely rejected. I was also informed by my Legislators, at the same time, that all was well with the approach to the GWOT.

If Tuesday's results lead to a retreat from the present, measured approach to the problem- it will be the handiwork of a public whose majority is incapable of seeing the grave danger at hand. Consequently, the ultimate and massive confrontation will only be postponed to a time when the enemy has become stronger and possibly even more successful in striking the US. I regard the next two years, beginning Tuesday morning and ending sometime on the night of Tuesday 11/4/'08, as potentially the most fateful of my time as an American.

As a teenager in 1962, I remember the pride afoot in this country when an American President stood up to a General Secretary of the Communist Party of a Soviet Union since made defunct largely by the great leadership of Republicans in the 1980's. So, it does seem fair to point out that we've always, as a nation, recovered in the nick of time when things became dicey in the past. Nevertheless, I'll be on the edge of my seat this Tuesday night.