Remind me again (since the media won't), who decided to bring those levels down in a vote-getting scheme in the northeastern part of the US?
having read the article, i am not sure that i agree with this headline. disagreement is to be expected within a tightly knit team during the problem definition and problem solution stage. each player needs to assertively get his perspective and the data he is aware of, on the table.
so near as i can tell, there is no argument about strategy; the debate is on tactics. that is, nobody is arguing if iraq should be invaded in this article, but rather they are arguing how iraq should be invaded.
these are team players and once a decision is reach, expect everyone to rally around, defend, and make happen, the decision.
shame on newsweek for putting the anti-bush, anti-american slant on this story. this is yet another example of the news media trying to undermine public opinion on the war against terrorism.
However, the time NOT find out you need more is when it isn't there as what happened during Anaconda with Fire Support.
Of course regardless of which it decided, the Monday Morning quarterbacks could improve on it.
2. We don't have the same military in 2002 that we did in 1991. We are down to 10 Army divisions and 3 Marine divisions, and committing 250K soldiers to an operation in Iraq would make us extremely vulnerable elsewhere.
3. The reference to Powell's military experience is a logical fallacy of the appeal-to-authority type. Anyone with a passing knoweldge of military history could name dozens--nay hundreds--of people with combat experience who had no strategic sense or insight whatsoever. Moreover, one common deficiency among professional soldiers is that their experience so dominates their thinking that it blinds them to changes that make this experience less relevant, and can prove to be a liability in the face of important technological and doctrinal changes--the "fighting the last war" problem.
4. Saddam's only real threat to us is his bio and chem warfare capability. This threat is greater when we mass our forces and take a long time to build them up (a la 1991). Reliance upon speed, maneuver, stealth, and deception in lieu of massive force will minimize our vulnerability to this type of threat. Powell's preferred approach would maximize it.
Rumsfeld et al advocate substituting imagination, information dominance, and technology for numbers. This exploits our comparative advantage. Overwhelming force need not require overwhelming numbers.
Powell seems mired in the past, unable to escape the bounds of his own experience. He is an exemplar of a longstanding tradition in the US Army that advocates reliance on mass to achieve victory and distrusts operational innovation or risk-taking--see Russell F. Weigley's Eisenhower's Lieutenants for a devastating critique of this mindset. He is a Bradley, not a Patton. This is not a compliment. (See Victor Davis Hanson's review of Carlo D'Este's new Eisenhower biography in the most recent National Review or his recent book that has some pretty revealing things to say about Bradley--and which come eerily close to describing Powell.)
Presidents should not be allowed to play with the state of military readiness, and congress should not be allowed to either. There should be a standard that no politican is allowed to mess with.