"- Don't break up the army."

Tom realize that you have been spun by the press.
We didn't break up the army- it fell apart. Now, maybe these guys heard that we were planning on breaking up the army so those in command "pre-empted" this plan, but I have doubts about this.

The grunts in the army were occuring costs higher than they were being paid- they didn't want to be in the army, they couldn't "afford it".
So I would say we shattered the command structure and result was that the army dissolved.

"But planning wasn't the problem, and still isn't. The problem is that we have chosen to fight the first "soft" war in history."

And I would say, look how successful this "soft war" has been.
Where else have there ever been such a quick transition- which was as remotely successful.
Now, there is a fairly good argument, that we could turned over soveriegnty sooner [for instance: the Iraqi US ambassador, speaking Congress recently, has supported this notion- and she very bright and capable ambassador].
I think we could have done it sooner, but I think this would have had higher risks of civil war and/or failure of the first govt- and making further lack of trust in next govt. Instead we did a lot of the heavy lifting- and of course got the blame for all the errors or consequence of working these issues.
And this leads to another part of this argument for quicker transfer of soveriegnty, in a sense it's for having more "Justice". In sense that the Coalition only helping to transform Iraq into a new nation- we go in destroy the Saddam regime, then let Iraqis do the hard work of building the nation. The reasoning being that Iraqi really wanted get rid of Saddam and make a better govt, but Saddam was too powerful [and was actually supported by all other countries with the oil revenues]. In this view, the coalition sort of acts as France did in the American Independence [The French helped nullified the British naval advantage].
One main problem with this is that "revolutions" are very rarely successful- usually the guys with guns don't heed those who interested in the more "soft power" approaches.
Now, also in certain aspects and I would say in the most important aspects, allowing the Iraqi to do the heavy lifting towards building their nation has been a major part of the coalition "plan". Iraqi miltary and security forces have been doing a lot of the fighting and taken comparable losses as the coalition forces.