This is such bunk. It should be common knowledge that we stormed into Iraq and straight to Baghdad with virtually no resistance and WAY faster than anyone thought we would. SH lay down and played dead, essentially. That fact was a good thing and greatly limited loss of life on our side. But the consequence of that was that we were spread way out over a long distance without manpower to adequately guard all the places that should have been guarded. It took a while to get all of our forces in place for that purpose.
It wasn't a mistake, it wasn't an accident, it wasn't oversight, it wasn't incompetency. It was just the result of being amazing successful in our initial thrust. You can never know, but if SH had stood his ground and fought tooth and nail at the onset of the war, we would no doubt have suffered numerous more casualties (even been hit with chem. and bio. weapons) than we're sufferering now from the remains of SH's ammo dumps.
You've made the first objective post on this thread that I have read (down to) so far.
I like Rummy alot and I have the greatest respect for the top guys that helped him execute the invasion.
There is a caveat though which we must be objective in acknowlegding and asking just how much it was taken into consideration.
Everything that Sadaam did - from the empty defense, to the well-organized and funded "insurgency", to the looting of government installations that had "intel", to the looting of "strategic materials", to an entire plan that incorporates all these elements - Sadaam had done before, when he was previously booted from a position of power in Iraq. In addition, there has always been one element in a lot of the "lunacy" that Sadaam displayed - he was consistent. History does not allways repeat itself, in exactly the same way. But Sadaam's history was known, to someone, and it did have some lessons for our strategic planners.
It is not subjective leftist complaining to ask: if we had wanted to see if Sadaam was pulling something we had some reason to believe he might (because prior history told us he might) could have, and did, our intelligence, as poor as it was, look to see if he was doing things that indicated he was setting up to carry out his - empty defense, looting, etc., etc., etc? Did we ask ourselves that question and did we look for indicators of it, prior to the invasion? I don't know those answers. But they are legitimate questions; legitimate for the purpose of trying to learn from our own history, in terms of strategic planning in a national/international crisis.
Would the war have been different, if Tenant, Rice, Rummy and Franks had chosen, or been told by Bush, in the fall of 2001 - here's the weekend homework. Read this detailed history of Sadaam in his rise and fall and rise again to power in Iraq. See if it tells us anything useful if Sadaam becomes convinced we will in fact run over him. What will he do if he totally expects the basic invasion will be an initial success? How can we tell that he is responding with that expectation? If we can see him responding that way, how should it affect our plans?
That said; I, have the utmost respect for Rummy and the generals and find no purpose in the current hand-wringing, other than trying to learn from our own history; including how we go about studying a situation for which we need to make strategic plans.
I hope someone thinks we need to do that, before push comes to shove in Korea or over the straits of Taiwan - which I fully expect are both still possible.