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"The Day We Lost the War in Iraq"
Noted anti-interventionalist Jim Henley said this about the weekend's bloodshed in Iraq:
I think he's too kind; the war was lost the day the US decided to disband the Iraqi army.
On the other hand, on August 30, 2003, I said out loud, "Today is the day we lost the war."
On the other other hand, we lost the war in November 2002, when Donald Rumsfeld decided to cut the number of troops heading into Iraq to a fifth of what was necessary:
With an unfolding catastrostrophe as wide-ranging as the Iraq war, it is not surprising that there are many points at which failure became inevitable.
I think history may well decide that the day the CPA closed Baby Sadr's toy paper was the day we definitively lost the Iraq War.
I think he's too kind; the war was lost the day the US decided to disband the Iraqi army.
On the other hand, on August 30, 2003, I said out loud, "Today is the day we lost the war."
NAJAF, Iraq (CNN) -- A massive car bomb that claimed the lives of one of Shiite Islam's top clerics and 124 others Friday was the deadliest attack in Iraq since the regime of Saddam Hussein fell and the third in a string of terrorist attacks this month.
On the other other hand, we lost the war in November 2002, when Donald Rumsfeld decided to cut the number of troops heading into Iraq to a fifth of what was necessary:
In November, Rumsfeld began working through the TPFDD, with the goal of paring the force planned for Iraq to its leanest, lightest acceptable level.
The war games run by the Army and the Pentagon's joint staff had led to very high projected troop levels. The Army's recommendation was for an invasion force 400,000 strong, made up of as many Americans as necessary and as many allied troops as possible. "All the numbers we were coming up with were quite large," Thomas White, a retired general (and former Enron executive) who was the Secretary of the Army during the war, told me recently. But Rumsfeld's idea of the right force size was more like 75,000.
With an unfolding catastrostrophe as wide-ranging as the Iraq war, it is not surprising that there are many points at which failure became inevitable.