I think that is just evidence of how much those who advocated military strategy during the Reagan Administration were marginalized by the new wave of Rapid Dominance advocates. They had total buy in.
I also believe Powell succumbed to the State Department culture.
I have little doubt that Powell’s stature was such that if he had insisted on overwhelming force that he would not have been contradicted.
And it would have hurt nothing.
Obviously, any long term rotation at the same level of troops would not work, but the idea behind the overwhelming force would have been to win and get it over with.
The rotational war is a tragic concept handed down to us from Vietnam. In the long run it is politically disastrous to keep a war seething because of the ability to rotate troops out after they’ve served their year.
Better the total mobilization of WWII. It forces the nation to identify what it wants to accomplish.