Rumsfeld's Troop Decisions Come Back to Haunt U.S.

There will be a lot of words written about the U.S. Marines who allegedly murdered civilans at Haditha, Iraq, over the next few weeks. Most of them will concern what allegedly happened between the Iraqis and the Marines. Relatively few of them will concern Rumsfeld's decision to try and fight this war on the cheap. Yet, it is that decision that led to what happened at Haditha.

Eric Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff back in 2002, told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that "several hundred thousand troops would be needed to "put an end to the violence against our troops and against each other." He based his testimony on the American experience in the Kosovo, where there was a ratio of 1 soldier for every 1000 people. That candor led to this rebuke from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who called his estimate "wildly off the mark" and said, "I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down." Rumsfeld himself was reported to have called Shinseki's testimony "bullshit".

So, where are we at three years and counting since our invasion? We have a ongoing insurgency in Iraq. We have lost many more men since the war "ended" than we did during the war itself, and now we have reports of American Marines murdering Iraqi civilans. If the arrogant idiots who run the Defense Department had listened to a professional military man instead of each other, a lot of the tragedy of the last three years would have been avoided. Putting several hundred thousand troops in Iraq would have reduced the chances of the insurgency and avoided the breakdown of law and order that followed the fall of Hussein.

Of course, that didn't happen in the faith-based presidency of George W. Bush. Because, after all, why would you listen to experts when you are convinced that you are doing God's work?
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