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Originally Posted by Scouts Out
I think as we debate, and in some cases ban people, on this subject... we miss the one person we could blame for the biggest failures in the war. Rumsfield. GEN Eric K. Shinseki told Rumsfild the number of troops he needed to win the war and the number he needed to keep the peace. Rumsfield went on tv and called him an idiot ad promptly pulled a general out of retirement who would agree with him and made him the Army cheif of staff. When we got into to Iraq, Rumsfield promptly had the Iraqi Army disbanded even though the Army recommended he not. His arrogacne is only matched by his total ignorance of military history. His failure to listen to the recomedation of his commanders probably was the biggest single failure of the entire war. Let us not forget his infamous "you fight with the army you brung" quote he told the guardsmen who were upset they were not completely equipped to MTOE (ad was prompted by a ewspaper reporter to say it).
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Don't forget that we would have had another 40,000 troops from the start if the Turkish Parliament had not betrayed us at the last minute. Also, while the words used may not have been dimplomatic, we do generally have to fight wars with what we have. Yeah, I know more stuff would save more lives, but, in reality, we can only go so far. If every soldier or Marine had his way, we would have a combined force of 3,000,000 troops to fight an army of 200,000, and each soldier would have their own fully supplied automated M-1 Abrams main battle tank, and each one of those would be supported by two F-22 Raptors, three Apache helos, five F-18 Hornets, and two artillery batteries. Not feasible. We have, by far, the best supplied military in the world, and it's getting better. Asking for much more seems a little picky.