Unrelenting assault

The NY Times continues to carry the "not enough troops" water, and I continue to be irritated by it. If the President asks the generals how many troops they need, and the generals tell him, and he says, "OK, deploy that many", then who are these so-called experts that think the generals are wrong?

One big reason that last year's "mission accomplished'' started to look like "mission impossible'' was that Pentagon planners provided only enough troops to defeat Saddam Hussein's crumbling armies and not enough to provide security for physical and political reconstruction. Large swaths of a country used to strong governance suddenly had no effective governance and insurgent militias surged forth to fill the gap. Over time, the insurgency established bases in Sunni Arab cities like Falluja, where nostalgia for the Sunni-oriented Baathist dictatorship has been greatest and support for the Shiite-led interim government remains virtually nonexistent.

This is wrong on many levels.

I've already handled the so-called "planning mistakes" in an earlier post and shown that the Time is ignoring the evidence. The famous "Shinseki" argument is simply false on its face.

Secondly, we know now that the "insurgency" had been planned well in advance of the war. The obsession with protecting innocent civilians has given Sadaam and his henchman ample warning on numerous occasions, including moving some of his weapons and money out of the country, putting in to place the plans for his "insurgency" and allowing terrorists to get a strong foothold in Fallujah, among other things.

We have so many "experts" in this country, it's not funny. Wouldn't it be nice if they used facts to form their opinions?