This article is not typical of Samantha Burns’ site, which mostly consists of witty humour. This is fairly long, but hopefully worth the read. The left has abandoned this slogan as of late, but they fail to realise just how......

James Joyner at Outside The Beltway links favorably to some video of Senator Elizabeth Dole being asked by Chris Matthews to name Democrats who favor appeasing the terrorists. Joyner apparently thinks this idea of Democrats as appeasers is some sort......

Phase IV operations receive less detail planning because the first three phases could have ended in a hundred different ways. There where a great deal of preposition assets that went to waste because we did not get the vast numbers of refugees that were expected. If we did, we would have been able to minimize it but would have been accuse of not fully planning for it because things would not have been perfect by no means and we knew it.

On the battlefield There will be places that lack sufficient forces. That does not mean that there is not enough in theater but simple not enough in a particular place.

Almost everyone over there was concern if we had enough and if we had three times the number we would still be concern if we had enough. The same can be said about having to much. I was one of those when I first got over there that thought we needed more until I was able to study the situation better. Remember we are talking theater wide not a particular battalion or company or even division.

I really think you need to do a little reading. It is clear from Fiasco and Cobra 11 that the vast majority of commanders on the battlefield, before and after the war commenced, were deeply concerned not only by the number of troops deployed, but also by the complete lack of planning for phase IV (Lt. Gen. Kellogg, overseeing systems for the command and control of forces in Iraq, said, and I quote: 'I was there for all the planning, all the execution of the Iraq war plan. I saw it all' But what he never saw was a plan for phase IV. 'The assumption was that everything would be fine after the war'.)

The main goal, according to the Bush administration, was not to topple Saddam, that was just the first part of a grand scheme to transform the Middle East. The main goal, if this strategy was to be completed, had to be to first secure and then transform Iraq.

In this they have failed spectacularly, despite dire warnings from the very beginning, and the consequences of this failure has weakened America for years to come.

It seems that in the new America, to state the obvious is now an act of treason, which leads to another problem for the Bush admin and its supporters- will there be enough prison space to hold all those who've been stating it?

Our problems have arisen because our war machine was being used as a political machine, something it was not designed nor prepared to do. We don't need more boots in Iraq, and we don't need less boots in Iraq, we need the right boots in Iraq, and that means re-training a whole lot of those boots for 4th gen warfare.

Any discussion about staying in Iraq must start with a discussion about what will be done differently from the past 3 years. So far neither Rumsfeld nor Cheney nor Bush have suggested any significant changes to our current tactics.

I respect General Shinseki views but I respect Gen. Tommy R. Franks views even more since he was the Commander on the ground. For every General or Colonel we had over there that thought we needed more forces we had three or more that thought we had about the right amount or needed less.

Our first priority was defeating Saddams standing military. Yes, we were worried and planned for refugees, restoring order and other concerns but those where secondary to accomplishing our main goal. I larger more cumbersome force could have very undesirable results. Surely you would not suggest that the main goal was not a great success. Sometime smaller is better.

I suspect that if we would triple our forces over there now, it would not greatly reduce the local violence. Look at the number of peacekeeping forces (Police, F.B.I, Etc) we have here in the U.S.A. Yet we have more violence here then they do in Iraq. Having a large number of boots on the ground does not necessary translate into more security. They need to be the right type of boots on the ground. We need to be smarter instead of always trying to throw more money and mass numbers at a problem.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

No, not the "War on terror". The desperation of Republicans to stay in power.

So silly.

Regards,

If Democrats are not rooting against America, then….

Do they support NSA data-mining?

Support the Patriot Act?

Support Gitmo?

Greywolf,
You have a very strange definition of "America". I've never heard the definition that "America" is about "Unchecked surveillance of the domestic population, restrictions of freedom, and indefinite internment without charge or judical appeal". I would hazard to say that your definition is at odds with the men who founded this nation.

Do they support NSA data-mining (the real action, not surveillance or the "wire-tapping" of the techno-ignorant media) ?
See Leahy, Kennedy thundering about "privacy" of terrorists.

Support the Patriot Act?
See Harry Reid's.. "we killed the Patriot Act."

Support Gitmo?
See Durbin comparing Gitmo to Nazi concentration camps.

No, I don't see much difference between Durbin, Leahy, Dodd,Kerry, Dean, ad nauseum and Moveon.Org, Lamont, Kos and the rest of the shrill "blame America first" infants.

In the post above where I wrote "I think it’s hard to argue in hindsight that the troop levels suggested by General Shinseki would have been better at restoring order than those ultimately employed," I intended to write "would NOT have been better..."

It was the military commanders that came up with using the forces that we used. We made some adjustments as we drilled the war plans. Given the logistics difficulties and other circumstance having more troops would have cause more trouble than it would solve.

Also we accomplished knocking out Iraqi military much faster than what was planned. The insurgents fading into the population would have occurred regardless of how many troops we had on the ground.

Sufficient body armor was a MSM created problem. The up-armor HMMV’s have killed more soldiers over there than it has saved. We had a planned to succeed but in war circumstance change. The original plan had a timeline of 10 to 20 years, which looks to be about what it will take. Bush has said it will take a long time from the start. It is the MSM and Dems that lied and said that Bush said that it would be quick.

According to Commanders on the ground Iraq is not in Civil war so who is not listening to Commanders on the ground? Reid. Our military is fully capable of taking on another war. Another MSM lie.

The MSM and Dems have done nothing to help this war out. Just the contrary, they have been the propagandists of our enemies.

I often wonder whether people (e.g., Greywolf above)are really serious when they talk about normal Democrats (i.e., not radical ANSWER-type leftists; they're NOT the same) rooting against America. Do you really believe that these people desire bad things for our country? Take, for example, Mr. Yglesias' post and Senator Reid's post above. Both of them seem to me to be primarily criticizing how we've been doing things, and arguing that the strategies employed by the Bush administration in the Middle East are bad ones that have not accomplished what was hoped. To me, this does not seem to be the same as saying, "I want policies that hurt America and our allies and interests in the Middle east and elsewhere." It's the opposite - people who care and who think our policies have had serious and negative consequences (Yglesias, being a pundit-type is more over the top, of course). Now, I take it as a possibility that these people could be mistaken - that isn't my point - my point is that I don't think that they are people who criticizing that administration in bad faith (contra, e.g., Cindy Sheehan, Ward Churchill, et al.).