Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to re: "Stranglehold"

Rumsfeld's "transformational military"
Robert — (archived)

You got it. Rumsfeld tried to implement The Plan right down the line in every detail, and that was the single largest contributor to the fiasco in Iraq. He promised twice the military power at half the price, and when the experienced planners at the Pentagon tried to tell the truth about the true scope and expense of the war, Rummy ruthlessly suppressed them. If the Bush Admin had been honest about the need for a permanent occupation force of 300,000-400,000 troops, there would have been serious questions and serious resistance to the rush of war...and they just couldn't have that. We won the military phase of the war with a lowball force, but we've lost the peace.

You know the old saying, "pay me now or pay me later". Perhaps we could have succeeded in Iraq by investing the resources up front and getting it over with; but now we're paying a larger price in total, stretched out over many painful and debilitating years (perhaps a hundred if you listen to McCain). It was a lousy bargain.

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