LN, I never come over here because two things people will never agree on is religon and politics. Everyone has their views. I read your post and somehow agree with it whole hearted!! I don't know if you saw Bush's interview on 60 minutes but he said pretty much the same as you. This has to be done and the bads guys need to be done away with and allow Iraq to stand alone without fear. If we don't help them to progress to that point then all is in vain because we will be back in the same stiuation a maybe worse. Because failue now would bring a whole host of future problems with these sorts and not just from Iraq!! Had we done nothing after 9-11 then everyone would be up in arms, Bush did something now half the people are up in arms. Just can't win!!!

They have found oil in Hawaii, in an unrelated story the U.S just declared war on Hawaii, tough question to answer. Seriously, We are reaping whats has been sown behind closed doors for over the last 35-40 years. Is this war justified, no way, should have stayed the course in Afganistan, but I believe He is right on what He is saying about Iran, there is a conspiracy against Israel not a theory but a real conspiracy, the Middle East is truly becoming the focal point of all History, what role will play in all of this. I know someone who is very high up in Washington and has shared some things with me in person that I never dreamt would happen and weeks later it came to pass. The leaders of this country have special privy info that we will never have, and probably do not want to have.

LN, I never come over here because two things people will never agree on is religon and politics. Everyone has their views. I read your post and somehow agree with it whole hearted!! I don't know if you saw Bush's interview on 60 minutes but he said pretty much the same as you. This has to be done and the bads guys need to be done away with and allow Iraq to stand alone without fear. If we don't help them to progress to that point then all is in vain because we will be back in the same stiuation a maybe worse. Because failue now would bring a whole host of future problems with these sorts and not just from Iraq!! Had we done nothing after 9-11 then everyone would be up in arms, Bush did something now half the people are up in arms. Just can't win!!!

Are you implying that GW posts on BGP under the moniker of Leatherneck? :D

Whether Bush is right or wrong on his strategy we will know in about 20-30 years when we see the longterm fallout of trying to setup a democracy in Iraq. If it holds and they become a stabilizing force in that region, he will be seen with 20/20 hindsight as a visionary and one of the greatest Presidents of all time.

Can we accept that on decisions of troop strength, as well as other tactical and strategic decisions, there is always going to be differing points of view? There has probably never been a major strategic decision made in the history of mankind that was unanimous. Frankly, a strength of the decision making process is having differing viewpoints on issues. Lest anyone think to the contrary, it was not the unanimous view of the military that we needed more troops when we invaded Iraq. Some respected military types thought we needed more. Some respected military types were very comfortable with the number. And I think the results showed that we had enough troops to win the war....etc., etc., etc.

Wow!!! :eek: :eek:

 

A cogent, rational, deliberative post that actually tries to understand and analyze the situation, not use it as an excuse to throw up cliches and sarcastic political criticisms. :thumb:

 

Is this sort of thing ALLOWED on BGP?! :eek: :eek:

On my way out this morning, I saw a brief report that said the Saudis were telling Condoleeza Rice that the Arab countries were ready to back Bush's new plan. They also stipulated that it all depends on Iraq backing up their words.

Are you implying that GW posts on BGP under the moniker of Leatherneck? :D

 

 

Now of all the funny things I've read on here, that's the funniest:laugh:. I've been called Dale Mueller in disguise in the past, now GW. My guess is that no one is ever going to say I was Ted Kennedy or Nancy Pelosi in disguise however:banana:.

 

And actually I have no disrespect for Ted or Nancy (at least from a political view perspective). They both are very passionate people firm in their liberal views on matters. I may disagree with their views, but I still respect them. We just look at life differently, which I'm fine with. There are some other politicians however that I don't respect because they have certain views only when its politically convenient for them to have those views. That's not the case to the best of my knowledge with Ted or Nancy however (and is likewise not the case with some posters on here like Francis and you whom I disagree with quite often, but still respect greatly).

Now of all the funny things I've read on here, that's the funniest:laugh:. I've been called Dale Mueller in disguise in the past, now GW. My guess is that no one is ever going to say I was Ted Kennedy or Nancy Pelosi in disguise however:banana:.

I was thinking that you were more the Dennis Kucinich type.

Can we accept that on decisions of troop strength, as well as other tactical and strategic decisions, there is always going to be differing points of view? There has probably never been a major strategic decision made in the history of mankind that was unanimous. Frankly, a strength of the decision making process is having differing viewpoints on issues. Lest anyone think to the contrary, it was not the unanimous view of the military that we needed more troops when we invaded Iraq. Some respected military types thought we needed more. Some respected military types were very comfortable with the number. And I think the results showed that we had enough troops to win the war.

 

And I think the results also showed that we did not have enough troops (I'd say boots on the ground, but that cliche is rather worn out) for the post war phase although some people felt we had enough and some felt we did not. The results proved that we did not. The salient question needs to be why didn't we?

 

Pretend you are the President. You know that before our troops fire the first round, you and the U.S. are going to be criticized by supposed allies like France and Russia as well as the Islamists world wide that this whole invasion was a subterfuge to take over and occupy Iraq for the oil. You likewise know that making Iraq 'work" post war is going to require the cooperation of the Iraqi people. They are going to have to "receive' the U.S. troops as liberators, not occupiers; as people not in Iraq to run their country, rather as people who came over to Iraq to liberate them so that they could run their own country. Making sense so far?

 

Thus as you do your post war planning, you have a choice to make: do we flood post war Iraq with multitudes of U.S. troops on every corner and risk the Iraqi people concluding that the U.S. is, as the critics have alleged, there to take over their country? Or do you attempt to minimize our presence in post war Iraq and hope that the people of Iraq will rise up and take over and operate their own country? I can fully seeing Bush and his advisors reviewin the two options and going with the latter approach, as I know that's how I might be inclined to decide. Unfortunately, as we all can see with our specially created hindsight glasses, the Iraqi people have not stepped up in the manner we hoped. Part of that is understandable. With the streets extremely dangerous, with bus loads of men on their way to sign up for the IDF being blown up, its kind of hard to stick your neck out too far. Its absolutely understandable in the current situation that more Iraqi people are not stepping up.

 

I do think Bush and his advisors totally underestimated the effectiveness that the insurgents would have on disrupting the ability or willingness of the Iraqi people to take more operational control of their country. They greatly misjudged the level of insurgency action. But that mistake is over and done with. It got us where we are, but doesn't help us get to where we need to get. Some can choose to dwell over the mistakes. I'd rather focus on what needs to be done. And I believe we now need to totally swarm the entire country with troops. We need to be on the corners, in the markets, in the police stations and in the recruiting centers. The Iraqi people clearly understand that without U.S. troops on every street corner, they will not be safe and secure. I believe that they will now much more willingly accept a much greater U.S. presence, something I do not believe they would have accepted immediately post war. In other words, the situation almost had to deteriorate before it could get better. With more troops we should be able to do a much better job of locating and destroying the insurgents and making Iraq a safer place for the Iraqi people. If we can do that, I believe the Iraqi people will assume control and responsibility for their country. Will it happen overnight? Nope. Will it happen without more losses to our troops? Nope. In fact I agree with the critics that we will have more losses of our troops than ever before. But such will be necessary if we really intend for Iraq to be a free and safe country. We have to throw out the insurgents until the Iraqi people and military are able to destroy them when the insurgents come back. And they will undoubtedly attempt to come back. The insurgent groups cannot allow the Iraq experiment to be successful. We and the Iraqi people cannot allow it to fail. And thus we really have no choice but to increase our presence to make Iraq safe for the Iraqi people if we don't want Iraq to be an even bigger mess than when Hussein was in charge. And for those reasons, I think Bush is right in increasing the number of troops on the ground. And I understand why he may have been hesitant to do so right after the war. He made a calculated decision to limit the number of troops so it did not appear we were occupying Iraq. His decision ended up being wrong, but that does not mean it was not a well thought out decision. We now have to do what it takes to straighten out the situation. Too much is at stake to just pull out the troops, cavalierly tell the Iraqis its time for them to step up to the plate and cross our fingers. It won't work and within 5 years we'll be back over there with an even bigger mess than exists today.

 

Leatherneck,

 

I have never gotten the impression that the far-reaching consequences of different levels of troop strength were given as much thoughtful consideration as you have written here. The insider accounts of the decision-making process leading up to the war regarding troop strength generally indicate that very little forethought was given to the period after Saddam's military was toppled. The focus was on the military operation of defeating Iraq's uniformed military forces, which was accomplished very quickly and efficiently. Most insider accounts describe tensions between Rumsfeld's vision of a leaner military (read: fewer soldiers and lighter, more quickly deployed equipment) and uniformed Pentagon leaders who advocated a much larger force to rapidly establish civilian order, secure weapons stockpiles, and seal the borders.

 

For example, reading the attached article from February, 2003 (a few weeks before the invasion took place) there are many statements by high level Administration officials that portray what now are obviously jaw-dropping levels of either ignorance or hubris. The article describes conflicts between the Administration and Army General Eric Shinseki over force levels required to provide security for and help rebuild postwar Iraq. Shinseki had previously made statements to Congress that an armed force of several hundred thousand troops would be necessary in postwar Iraq.

 

Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary, in testimony to Congress prior to the invasion, gave the following reasons "why he believed a much smaller coalition peacekeeping force than General Shinseki envisioned would be sufficient to police and rebuild postwar Iraq. He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo. He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force that "stayed as long as necessary but left as soon as possible," but would oppose a long-term occupation force. And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it. "I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction," Mr. Wolfowitz said. He added that many Iraqi expatriates would likely return home to help."

 

Rumsfeld responded to Shinseki's statements by saying that, "The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far off the mark,"

 

I just don't think there was much more than passing consideration given to the postwar occupation period by this Administration. It's pretty telling that the President participated in the "Mission Accomplished" celebration less than three months after the invasion.

 

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/attack/consequences/2003/0228pentagoncontra.htm

Leatherneck,

 

I have never gotten the impression that the far-reaching consequences of different levels of troop strength were given as much thoughtful consideration as you have written here. The insider accounts of the decision-making process leading up to the war regarding troop strength generally indicate that very little forethought was given to the period after Saddam's military was toppled. The focus was on the military operation of defeating Iraq's uniformed military forces, which was accomplished very quickly and efficiently. Most insider accounts describe tensions between Rumsfeld's vision of a leaner military (read: fewer soldiers and lighter, more quickly deployed equipment) and uniformed Pentagon leaders who advocated a much larger force to rapidly establish civilian order, secure weapons stockpiles, and seal the borders.

 

For example, reading the attached article from February, 2003 (a few weeks before the invasion took place) there are many statements by high level Administration officials that portray what now are obviously jaw-dropping levels of either ignorance or hubris. The article describes conflicts between the Administration and Army General Eric Shinseki over force levels required to provide security for and help rebuild postwar Iraq. Shinseki had previously made statements to Congress that an armed force of several hundred thousand troops would be necessary in postwar Iraq.

 

Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary, in testimony to Congress prior to the invasion, gave the following reasons "why he believed a much smaller coalition peacekeeping force than General Shinseki envisioned would be sufficient to police and rebuild postwar Iraq. He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo. He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force that "stayed as long as necessary but left as soon as possible," but would oppose a long-term occupation force. And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it. "I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction," Mr. Wolfowitz said. He added that many Iraqi expatriates would likely return home to help."

 

Rumsfeld responded to Shinseki's statements by saying that, "The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far off the mark,"

 

I just don't think there was much more than passing consideration given to the postwar occupation period by this Administration. It's pretty telling that the President participated in the "Mission Accomplished" celebration less than three months after the invasion.

 

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/attack/consequences/2003/0228pentagoncontra.htm

 

I'm not surprised to have you cite an Army general wanting exremely large numbers of troops. Its always been a somewhat marked difference in Marine and Army philosopy (and understandbly so. The Army's "strength" is its extreme size; whereas as the Marines, because its much smaller size has always trumpeted the benefit of small, mobile units emphasizing maneuver tactics). The Army has historically liked the "over whelm them numbers approach".

 

As I acknowledged, I do think the administration misjudged the affect the insurgents would have (including ethnic strife). If you want to dwell on the mistaken judgements, so be it. I think we are beyond that, unless we want to have this situation further digress into fingering pointing for political gain. The issue today should be more focused on whether a troop build up will help or hurt the situation in Iraq. I think it will help for the reasons stated.

 

And while my ego would like me to believe that I'm smarter than all the folks involved in foreign and military policies in Washington, I do believe that there are a lot of smart people in Washington that would have conducted a similar analysis of the concern about looking like we were going to occupy Iraq by stationing a large number of troops in post war Iraq. Whether they state those concerns publicly or not (and my guess is that they may have had reasons not to so state them publicly), I do believe that they thought through the issues and concerns in a very rational manner.

 

I'm not of the belief that the people in Washington can do no wrong, but I just as firmly don't believe that they can't do anything right.

I think they did give more than passing consideration to the amount but they got it wrong. Rumsfeld's quote above is accurate, several hundred thousand are not needed. However the current 140,000? certainly was. I think the bigger error is in how they are used.

I'm not surprised to have you cite an Army general wanting exremely large numbers of troops. Its always been a somewhat marked difference in Marine and Army philosopy (and understandbly so. The Army's "strength" is its extreme size; whereas as the Marines, because its much smaller size has always trumpeted the benefit of small, mobile units emphasizing maneuver tactics). The Army has historically liked the "over whelm them numbers approach".

The one think that many of these people seem to forget when they suggest large forces in place, is how do we fill those ranks? We're already rotating our forces over and over again with repeated tours, and we're pilfering the National Guard to keep our troop strength up. Sure, we could put every American figthing man in Iraq, but what do we do 12 months from now?

I don't think the Army general wanted more troops because he believed they would be necessary to topple Iraq's military. I think there was widespread belief that it wouldn't take the 400,000+ men of the first Gulf War just to defeat Iraq's military. The reports I have read suggest that it was the postwar security situation that worried the uniformed military. A few months back, I posted a now declassified war game report from 1999 that called for 400k troops to invade and secure Iraq. http://www.bluegrasspreps.com/showthread.php?t=106216&highlight=iraq It's fairly obvious that the decision-makers running the 2003 invasion gave very little if any consideration to this analysis.

 

I just think, given the time that has passed since the moment when significant numbers of additional troops could have helped, we are past the point of more troops (especially a paltry 21,000) being of much benefit. Or, to put it more succinctly: Too little, too late.

I don't think the Army general wanted more troops because he believed they would be necessary to topple Iraq's military. I think there was widespread belief that it wouldn't take the 400,000+ men of the first Gulf War just to defeat Iraq's military. The reports I have read suggest that it was the postwar security situation that worried the uniformed military. A few months back, I posted a now declassified war game report from 1999 that called for 400k troops to invade and secure Iraq. http://www.bluegrasspreps.com/showthread.php?t=106216&highlight=iraq It's fairly obvious that the decision-makers running the 2003 invasion gave very little if any consideration to this analysis.

 

I just think, given the time that has passed since the moment when significant numbers of additional troops could have helped, we are past the point of more troops (especially a paltry 21,000) being of much benefit. Or, to put it more succinctly: Too little, too late.

 

No basis for this statement. They may have simply disagreed. It's STILL not obvious that 400,000 were needed.

The one think that many of these people seem to forget when they suggest large forces in place, is how do we fill those ranks? We're already rotating our forces over and over again with repeated tours, and we're pilfering the National Guard to keep our troop strength up. Sure, we could put every American figthing man in Iraq, but what do we do 12 months from now?

 

 

And thats another reason that I think Bush went with the lets go small approach to see if it first works.

 

Assuming Bush and his advisors looked at the post war size decision like I think they did (because I think great minds think a like :ylsuper:), then I think a fair question for the critics to ask is why didn't Bush tell the public his rationale and explain to the American public that if the small approach didn't work, then we would have to go with the "troops on every corner" approach (at a great cost and risk to American lives)? The only logical reason for that is that he and his advisors felt that if they put all that info out in the public it could be used by the insurgents and ethnic factions against our best interests. I'm sure that the Bush critics are convinced that he intended to deceive the American public, but I have to seriously wonder if their animous for Bush, more than proof, is leading them to conclude such. Just because Bush is a conservative who has a more aggressive foreign policy perspective than a lot of Democrats does not and should not make him the Devil incarnate, any more than Pelosi should not be considered the Devil incarnate by the Republicans. They are simply people that have differing views and philoophies on what's best for America; nothing more, nothing less. Both sides of the aisle really need to keep that perspective in mind in our rush to criticize folks on the other side of the aisle. Even though one of them may be wrong in their beliefs, it still does not mean that person is evil, deceitful or worse. Maybe I should have been a civics teacher instead of an attorney:ylsuper: