Sufficient Troops and Politicians

Waaay back, in 2002, the Chief of Staff for the Pentagon recommended 400,000 to 500,000 thousand U.S. troops be utilized to defeat Hussein and to sustain peace and order in an occupied Iraq.

That recommendation was shot down by a politician, the Secretary of Defense, and that negative was sustained by another politician, the Commander in Chief.

During the early occupation months, calls went out for more troops, but the Commander in Chief constantly told the American people that the generals on the ground did not ask for more troops, so none would be provided--politicians would not second guess the generals on the ground.

After the elections of 2006, after an electoral repudiation of the Commander in Chief's handling of the Iraqi occupation.

When politicians, responding to the electoral desires of the American public began to demand a re-deployment, a lessening of American troop levels in Iraq, all of a sudden the Commander in Chief, responding to a sudden "need" for more troops from the generals, discovered the solution to the problems in Iraqi occupation would be solved, in part, by more troops. This in the face of "politicians" trying to "micromanage" the occupation effort.

So, as long as the Commander in Chief had a compliant Congress, no increase in troops was needed; after a repudiation of the CiC's policies at the polls, there is a desperate need for troops.

Hubris.

America weeps.

All for a tax cut in 2000.

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