Outstanding article. Right on the money about Shinseki: he gave the administration the right answer about Iraq, and he was degraded for speaking the truth clearly.
We ALL now know that the 250,000 men Shinseki wanted on the ground to fight the war and maintain the peace would have been exactly the right answer.
I still find it hard to believe that we fell back into the “capture and depart” policy of Vietnam regarding enemy hotspots. It didn’t make sense then. I can’t think of a decent reason why it would ever make sense, assuming one were trying gradually to subdue an entire nation.
it is still my opinion that rumsfield and bush executed the war in just the right way to enable the killing of more jihadists than ever...
if we overwhelmed them, al-qada would have scattered like the roaches they are and infested a lot more areas. this plan, as limited and brainless as the mainstream media made it out to be, attracted the very best of the worse kind of people and allowed our brave men and women the opportunity to kill them, all of them.
jmho, of course.
teeman
In defense of the Pentagon, I should point out that they really didn't have much of a choice in the matter. They were given a completely unrealistic task to accomplish (in terms of both manpower needs and financial costs), and they basically had to make do with what they had.
Rumsfeld isn't some short-sighted bozo and this war hasn't been a surprise to those who are waging it.
The Administration rightly realized a draft would be not only counter-productive in this modern age of warfare, but the country would not stand for it.
Five years is a long time, and people are understandably tired of spending one-half trillion dollars on something that has seemed to bring them less prosperity and $4/gallon gas prices.
Four hundred thousand Americans died in four years in WWII. Four thousand Americans died in five years fighting in Iraq.
There is still only one superpower on this planet and it continues to be our home address. I don't believe this remains true because this government makes strategic mistakes.
True, but where would 250,000 troops have come from after 8 years of Clinton cuts, and 2-3 years of GHW Bush cuts before that. Cuts in which Shineki acquiesced, at least in part.