[h-roark]

Look I tend to write off most of these pundits, also; however Peters is truly a very intelligent and thoughtful writer on the subject of modern warfare with the actual experience to back it up. He is not the equivalent of a "PERFUMED PRINCE" like Wesley Clark What's more, if Rumsfeld ignored the advice of his military commanders and I have heard this reported a number of times from conservative sources, then he should suffer the same fate as Aspin. If you needlessly kill your own because you are afraid of the political implications of sending too big of a force package that's inexusable.

And BTW, being a fighter pilot may be great but the best President the military has had in recent years is RR because he got out of the way of the military people. I admire W for doing much the same thing but if Rumsfeld directly contradicts what the warfighters think they need to accomplish the task while it just sits here stateside that is just plain wrong- fighter pilot or not.

[MHGinTN]

What Peters has failed to include in the equations is Saddam's use of poisons that will mostly kill Iraqis, with the resulting international outcry for our 'invasion of Iraq' to stop immediately before we are responsible for the deaths of all Shiites in Southern Iraq.

Saddam's game is to manipulate the international community. He was coordinating his moves with France and Russia, and will try to do so further, sacrificing (hardly a sacrifice since he wants Iraqi population to shrink to 5 million, mostly Sunnis) Iraqi civilians to raise the outrage coefficient.