President Bush could do well to heed these words...he, Rummy, Cheney and the illogical strategy of sending too few fine men and women into battle with too many hands tied behind their backs are the real reasons that the GWOT isn't gaining ground and the cost was an election that went south.
In 2001 the U.S. invaded Kuwait--a country one eighth the size of Iraq--with 600,000 boots on the ground (and that was just the U.S. contingent). We went into Iraq with just over 1/5th of that total. It doesn't take a military genius to calculate the difference and guess what would happen if the overly optimistic elements (i.e. they'll welcome us as heroes) didn't fall exactly into place...Hello!
Bush was warned repeatedly about bad scenarios if he didn't have the adequate troops by good generals. He ignored them. The reason he didn't use the doctrine of overwhelming force (1.5 million was tossed around by many experts) is IMHO that he could not keep his promise of a tax cut if he did. You see, Chogal, there is an old economic axiom at work here: you can have either guns or butter but you can't have both.
Tax cuts INCREASED the revenue into the government. Doesn't that mean more money in the coffers?
The problem has never been the number of troops - 600,000 troops would have just meant more targets for terrorists post-invasion.
The problem is restrictions on their use. The road home from Iraq runs through Damascus and Tehran.