Face it, they were wrong. Rumsfeld and Bush rejected the Colin Powell doctrine of overwhelming force and said it could be done quickly with airpower. A great number of military analysts now say we are stretched way too thin on our supply lines and, more alarmingly, are far too thin in armor for the task at hand. In fact we have only one fully armored tank division facing 3 Iraqi republican guard armor divisions. There are also mechanized infantry but they are not designed to fight armored tank divisions, and the 3rd infantry has 75 apache helicopters, but that's essentially it on the ground now and they are expected to take out all those dug in Iraqi forces. The marines are there but they are not a force designed to sweep over hundreds of miles and faced tank divisions. Air power of course is way in our favor but as demonstrated over the last few days weather can seriously inhibit that advantage at least when it comes to supporting forces on the ground.

The northern front was supposed to relieve the pressure on the forces in the south but when Turkey said no those forces had to come around to kuwait. They are still several weeks away from being in place. Now, finally, more armored divisions are on the way to Iraq from Germany (the 1st going to northern Iraq) and from the US ( I forget which division but it was announced they are going to Iraq yesterday). These armored forces will also take weeks at a minimum to be in place. In the meantime our forces in Southern Iraq are the only game in town.

It seems clear at this point the "simultanaity" strategy was not effective, as nearly everyone is now saying the war will likely take months. I believe it is clear we will still win this war but had we waited another month and built up overwhelming force our forces would be in less danger, and we would have likely had more international support. Bush had such a hard on to start this war though he couldn't wait until we had everything in place to assure a more rapid victory. Clearly a miscalculation at the top. Too bad a military man like Colin Powell wasn't running this show.