You issued your familiar challange to prove how more troops could possibly help.

Your interpretation of Bowser's reply is telling: - Bowser responds by rattling off, for about the tenth time, the "We're all going to die" litany. Like I didn't hear all that back in April. He again repeats, without addressing my question at all, the fact that we have too few troops.

Here's his response: Above all, we're losing. That's prima facie evidence of not enough force on the ground. We're losing. It should not take anything more than that to demonstrate there aren't enough troops. That's been cited a number of times.

More and more of the countryside is under the control of Iraqis hostile to the American occupation, more and more of it is "no-go". The American hostages who were recently beheaded in acts of barbarism which deserve slow and steady retribution on the bodies of the perps lived in Baghdad. The bastards just walked down the street, up to the door, and took 'em.

Second, the resistance is escalating in the areas nominally under control of the Americans. As demonstrated, not even Baghdad is safe. Why? Because the Iraqis don't like the American occupation, and there are not enough Americans to repress the population.

Third, think. Even Bush admits "miscalculating". There is much more resistance, and no reinforcements for American troops. The result is the above - ceding much of the country to Iraqis, after having supposedly "won" the war.

It is cold, cruel and very often fatal to send a force into harms way which is not adequately manned to handle the mission. And that's what's happened. Obviously.

"The panel's findings do, however, provide new support for two central criticisms of the Rumsfeld team's approach in Iraq last year: that the invasion plan called for too few troops, half as many as were used in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and that the Pentagon failed to plan smartly for occupying the country after the United States defeated the Iraqi military."

Brookings Institute - "After criticizing the Clinton administration for overdeploying and overusing the US military in the 1990s, the Bush administration is now doing exactly the same thing--except on a much larger scale. The added demands placed on the military should produce a safer world, and in particular a safer Persian Gulf region, so this comment is not intended as a critique of the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein. But having made that decision, and having badly underestimated the difficulty as well as the force requirements of accomplishing the post-Saddam stabilization effort successfully, the Bush administration or its successor now needs to get serious about making ends match means. At present, the latter are insufficient.

Arf (and he's going to try to deny we're losing. As if!)

Summary of my interpretation:

1) We are losing. You may agree or disagree with this statement, but if true it is a clear argument that more troops are necessary as he stated. It was exactly on point.

2) More and more of the country is defined as no-go for Americans. In case he was too brief on this argument, it should be obvious that areas that are too dangerous for Americans to police are breeding grounds for resistance. You know the increasing organization among our opponents that the military has referred to lately? This is where it happens. More troops equals more places we can field enough forces to keep them from going no-go.

3) Resistance is escalating. You telling me that you understand how a rising crime rate calls for more cops, but you don't understand how an increasingly effective insurgency calls for more troops??? Cmon, Tom. Pull the other.

4) He finished off strongly with two quotes from pretty good sources that state precisely that there are too few troops.

In your summary you describe yourself as responding to his "litany of doom". And I take you at your word that's what you did. But his post that you called for and that he provided was not a litany of doom. It was a proof that we have too few troops. Which subject you ignored, now. Which he predicted you would.