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re: Good answer.
gbaikie — (archived)

"And as far as going in with too little force, and too much concern for how the war would look on TV or in the newspapers, I'd have to agree. "

As I recall, we had more troops that were planned to go through Turkey. Was expecting a NATO ally to refuse to allow troops to go through and base from their country a mistake?
Remember, that France lied to Colin Powell. Remember that Turkey wants to become part of the EU.
Should Rummy had planned on France betraying us, should Rummy have expected Turkey to fail to support us? If not would more troops have been position to enter Turkey, only to be turned back?
So to sum it up you think we should have had 400,000 troops in the sands of Kuwait, waiting for the UN political process to resolve?
OK, fine, whatever. How long do you want to field these troops at the strength of 400,000 in Iraq? You want back forces ready to go elsewhere or to back up the active 400,000 in Iraq- right. And why only have 25,000 in Afghanistan- should this doctrine suggest say 250,000 in Afghanistan.
Now, Congress wants to know how much this is going to cost. What's your answer?
Congress also want you to give all the troops new body armor and they want it done yesterday, also they think your Humvees need more armor. ETC.
It seems to me that with the number of troops we did deploy, there was a lot of talk about our troops stretched thin. If you double or triple the number of troops wouldn't that *actually* cause the problem that the press were so concerned about?
Should Rummy plan to fight a long war, or should he plan for a short war that would need to be abandoned if the war actually took longer than some policy wonks imagined- due to simply not having enough troops to rotate them out, or simply because Congress didn't want to continue pay the bill any longer.

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