Rumsfeld long has been a punching bag for Democrats and journalists, who wish we had not gone to war with Iraq at all. Lately they have been joined by right-wingers who want someone to blame because we haven't won yet.
I think that sums it up nicely.
The author Jack Kelly starts with the armor issue. That I hope has been lain to rest.
The author also goes after one of my pet peeves, the so-called too-small size of the invasion force:
But the complaint is mostly bovine excrement. U.S. and British troops swiftly defeated the Iraqi forces, with very few casualties. This would have been true even if some of the Republican Guard formations which mysteriously melted away had stood and fought.
We did smash Saddam's legions in record time with few casualties. Just what would we have accomplished by waiting 6 months to add more troops? We would have given Saddam time to come up with nasty surprises, given world events more time to derail us, and with a larger force would have reduced the ability to rotate forces into Iraq to replace the invasion force. And since 3rd ID had already spent a long time in the Gulf would we have rotated that unit out in a lengthy deployment or kept it in place?
Kelly also addresses the so-called error of disbanding the Iraqi army--another pet peeve of mine:
To begin with, there was no Iraqi army to keep on hand for peacekeeping. The poorly paid and horribly treated Shia conscripts all had deserted. Loyal Sunnis in the Republican Guard had left to prepare for guerrilla war against the Americans.
The officer corps was completely untrustworthy on top of it all.
I do take exception with Kelly's assertion that we should have sent 3 or 4 more brigades to Iraq after the fighting was over. Actually, I'd count 4th ID's three brigades and two cavalry regiments as follow-on forces that added 5 brigades to the occupation force.
Intelligence wasn't good. Not detecting the plans for an insurgency by Saddam's thugs was a major error. Had we known, we could have cracked heads, arrested any males with short hair and bad attitudes, and shot looters right off the bat.
Of course, had we done those things and forestalled the Baathist revolt, we'd be deep into Court TV's coverage of the International Criminal Court's case against the brutality of the American Army in Iraq for being unnecessarily brutal. You know that's true.
We made some errors in the war. Name a war without errors. Yet despite the errors we won decisively, ended Saddam's reign of terror and nuclear ambitions, and are building a new, free Iraq from the shambles Saddam left Iraq.
Fire Rumsfeld? Hell, give him a Medal of Freedom.
