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"How about the comments of the senior ground commander in Iraq:"

The senior ground commander then does not mention a single thing about the timetable for troops being deployed being stepped up. You are a fraud and a blowhard.

No, I'm not. You're overreacting.

Yes, you are, WP.

You claimed: "But add this stepped up timetable and the faux pas of wanting $600,000,000 for ICBM missile defense the --day--before-- 9/11 and that is surely two strikes on the guy."

So Rumsfeld's faux pas was not in having to go to a stepped up timetable, it was in failing to anticipate every conceivable tactic the enemy might engage in. You are a shifty SOB, aren't you?

The important thing is not whether Rumsfeld anticipated that the irregulars would use pick up trucks to harry our columns, but whether our troops were equipped to fend off such attacks. The irregulars are being chewed up tout de suite. Soon, they will all be dead. They are not inflicting heavy casualties on our troops. They are not stopping our advance, even though the sandstorms did for a time.

Let's see how much, in the big picture, these little pinprick attacks really matter. My guess it that they are an annoyance, nothing more.

I saw your post where you claimed that if things were going as planned, the Iraqis would not be destroying our armored personnel carriers. Is it your claim that the plan anticipated that no armored personnel carriers would be destroyed? That is foolishness on your part. Are you claiming that ALL our armored personnel carriers are being destroyed? I doubt if our planners foresaw that particular scenario, but I also doubt that ALL our armored personnel carriers are being destroyed.

Please try not to be such a hysterical Pollyanna.

Gee whiz, how is it that a recent effective war mopde wasn;t war-gamed? The technicals of Somlaia, Hackworth's bad dream "Viet Nam" ground only supply line harrassment . No way, Jose. Can't use that ticket for the double feature.

The senior ground commander then does not mention a single thing about the timetable for troops being deployed being stepped up. You are a fraud and a blowhard.

The media had plenty of ephemeral reports of units being shipped who were not originally supposed to go or who were being sent before it was programmed, to substantiate the idea of a "scramble" was on to get more boots on the ground.

Last night on NPR Rumsfield's comments were aired in which he now calls this op "Tommy Franks' plan." One of the talking heads ----I think the one from the Brookings institute -- said that a week ago he wouldn't have called it Tommy Franks' plan. It's not going as well as we would like.

This, combined with his desire to shift money from anti-terror to ICBM missile defense, in my mind, meas that the jury is still out on Rumsfield. You disagree, fine.

Walt

So Rumsfeld's faux pas was not in having to go to a stepped up timetable, it was in failing to anticipate every conceivable tactic the enemy might engage in. You are a shifty SOB, aren't you?

In 1991, we assumed the Iraqis would fight. This time, we did not. We made an assumption. The plan this time was predicated on them rolling over and playing dead, especially in the south. This assumption violated a -basic- operational tenet. It was not an issue of "every conceivable tactic."

Walt

Yup. The fact remains, Saddam was MORE successful in inflicting casualties in Gulf War I than he is now, on his own territory.