Drum on Bremer on Rumsfeld
Still more evidence that Rumsfeld and company refused to commit enough troops to Iraq to do the job properly. Non-conclusive, but it coheres with other things we know, so the smart money is currently on this conclusion.
Still more evidence that Rumsfeld and company refused to commit enough troops to Iraq to do the job properly. Non-conclusive, but it coheres with other things we know, so the smart money is currently on this conclusion.
posted by Winston Smith at
11:26 AM
3 Comments:
Winston, Matthew Yglesias, whose position before the war (torn between support for humanitarian intervention and distrust of the Bush administration) closely tracks with your own, has repeatedly pointed out that the "there weren't enough troops committed" argument ignores a salient fact: there WEREN'T ANY MORE TROOPS TO SEND! The U.S. Armed forces as it was constituted in 2003 simply did not have enough manpower to support a two hundred thousand strong invasion force. One more way that the "dream intervention" that pro-war liberals imagined getting was completely outside of the realm of possibility.
Matthew,
Do you know when that information became widely-known? I admitted once in the past that you were right about taking that factor into consideration, but then I came to realize that even I--a pretty damn close observer of what was going on at the time--did not hear that point made before the war.
Although I admit that it wasn't a point many people bothered making before the war (I wasn't aware of it), due to all of the other issues that were being bandied about, in retrospect, it's self-evident. I mean, we're not talking about something that was hidden: all you needed to do was look at the size of the U.S. standing Army (about 1 million), look at the usual ratio of combat-to-support troops during military operations (about 1 to 10) and the 200,000 strong invasion force is shown to be a physical impossibility. The reason no body talked about this, I believe, has something to do with the fact that the defense department smacked down the larger force idea before it ever entered the popular debate (they Shinsekied it, if you will). Maybe one of the reasons they were so swift to quash large invasion force talk among the brass is because it might have brought attention to the fact that a large invasion force was impossible, thus undercutting popular support for war.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home