SHOCK AND AWFUL

ON the fifth anniversary of our cam paign to remove Saddam Hussein's monstrous regime from power, it's hard not to despair - not because of the situation in Iraq, which has improved remarkably, but because so few American politicians in either party appear to have drawn the right lessons from our experience.

For the record, I still believe that deposing Saddam was justified and useful. He was a Hitler, and he was our enemy. But I'm still reeling from the snotty incompetence with which the Bush administration acted. Above all, I'm ashamed that I trusted President Bush and his circle to have a plan for the day after Baghdad fell.

All of our other failures in Iraq stemmed from this fundamental neglect of a basic requirement: Our soldiers and Marines reached Baghdad without orders or strategic guidance. We became the dog that caught the fire truck. The tragedy is that it didn't have to be that way: One thing our military knows how to do is plan.

But the relevant staffs were prevented from doing so. Ideologues and avaricious friends of the administration wanted the war for their own reasons, and they didn't intend to alarm Congress with high cost estimates. So they trusted the perfumed tales of a convicted criminal, Ahmad Chalabi, rather than the professional views of the last honorable generals then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had not yet removed.

Even on the purely military side, the White House put its faith in hopeless gimmicks, such as "Shock and Awe," convincing itself that ground troops were an afterthought. Of course, it was the old-fashioned grunts, tankers, gunners and supply sergeants who had to get us to Baghdad.

Iraq just didn't have to be this hard.

By the way, another interesting note: The U.S. Air Force was a vocal and determined proponent of “Rapid Dominance” as one might expect. The intellectual battles over this strategy (vice “overwhelming and decisive force) were fought during the Clinton years. Gen. Merrill McPeak was the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force at that time and led the charge in support of “Rapid Dominance”, successfully causing re-allocation of defense budget dollars from the land forces to air and naval forces.

By the time Dubya became president the strategy was all but doctrine.

Now retired, Gen. Merrill McPeak has endorsed B. Hussein Obama for president.

You said: freepers will see you for who you are

Since I have been a member of FR since 1999, four years before I retired from military service, Freepers have had plenty of time to do just that. And I have gotten to know many Freepers in person by attending both of President Bush’s FR Inaugural Balls.

I am truly sorry that you seem to lack the intellectual capability to make or understand a coherent argument, but your silly personal attacks simply highlight your lack of intellectual ability. Product of the Maryland Public Schools I assume.

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