To a certain extent, every administration discounts the experts left over from the previous regime. I personally experienced a great deal of frustration with the Clinton team when they took over in 1993 and 1994. We excused a lot of that at the time because there had not been a Democratic administration for 12 years and talent was thin on the ground. However, I believe that this administration had plenty of nonpartisan expertise available but simply failed to make use of it. As I noted in an earlier related post, the Republican party has a long history of mistrust in its dealings with the State Department that go back to the McCarthy era. In that regard, the parallels with that time and today are on point. Anyone with any actual knowledge of the enemy need not apply.

. . . catastrophic human resources situations . . . war torn nation . . . bungled . . . we picked the wrong team.

While we ought not excuse DoD or its politicized Republican appointees, its having appointed a bunch of little Republican piggies to swill from the CPA trough was pretty inconsequential as regards "success" in Iraq.

The consequential party was and remains the U.S. Army and, to a lesser extent, the USMC. Those organizations were tasked with securing Iraq in order that those doing reconstruction could do their jobs. They failed. And from that failure flowed the Iraq disaster.

If incompetence is a judgment rendered upon failure, then, the real incompetents in Iraq have been the military commanders who presided over post-combat Iraq.

"And that was ultimately Rumsfeld's call"

That's pure supposition on your part. That's not the way Rumsfeld tells the story. Having learned the lesson of Vietnam (politicians lose wars - soldiers win them), Rummy says he let the military call the shots on force strength. If that is true, we have witnessed the same sorry performance from those military commanders that Lincoln did (Lincoln fired 5 generals before finding one interested in actually winning).

Maybe you think Rumsfeld is lying? If so, there is a way to find out, put a few general's jobs (and precious retirement) on the line.  I tend to think Rummy is lying, and I wouldn't mind seeing a full blown fight between him and his generals. Not that it will mean anything in Iraq at this late date, but a wedge between the Republicans and the military is a delightful prospect domestically.

A "political solution" seems to be gaining some traction in Congress. The concept is that we've made a bonehead blunder by postponing the provincial elections for fear that radicals would get elected. Duh, like who did ya think would end up mayor in Fallujah?

As Senator Biden put it, "Delaware has it's own state police and so does New Jersey" and the federal FBI doesn't enforce local law in those states. Yet we have fostered a national police in Iraq that is riddled with militia members.

The idea is to legitimize the militias that now infest the national police and at the same time give them a civilian authority of their choosing, someone to answer to and someone others can point fingers at. Which beats the shadowy "unknowable unknowns" Rummy is so fond of dealing with. It's called accountability.

Obviously the citizens of Fallujah aren't going to elect any friends of Muqtada al-Sadr and we can be certain that the citizens of Najaf will respond with equal prejudice in their selection of local authority. The hope is that Shia militia (opps - police) will patrol Shia neighborhoods and Sunni militias will patrol Sunni neighborhoods. This assumes that Sunnis will not elect Al Qaeda, but then if they do - well democracy is messy.

One of the complaints I see on Iraqi blogs is that US forces will move into a village that Al Qaeda abandoned an hour ago, disarm the locals because they may be bad guys, then leave the village defenseless and at the mercy of Al Qaeda who certainly returns as soon as we've been called back to Bagdad to "restore order". Establishing elected local authority, and arming it, sounds like a winner in this situation.

Given that the national government has virtually no presence outside of the green zone, maybe it's time to give up on the fantasy that they ever will - or even should. Maybe legitimizing reality will work?!? We're not winning this war, maybe it's time to look for a way to lose that is short of a catastrophe.

If the President can't break out of his "stay the course" fatalism, maybe Congress can use it's purse strings to give the Bagdad government an ultimatum. What's amazing is that Senators Lugar and Biden seem quite united in doing just that (funny how elections here can concentrate the mind).

"Cobra II" makes it clear that at the briefing on attacking Iraq given at the Pentagon in December, 2001 the military's plan which started with General Zinni's call for 500,000 troops, was refined down to 350,000 troops.

Rumsfeld was not happy with the use of that many troops. General Meyers asked Rumsfeld what number he wanted to use. Rumsfeld without any rhyme or reason used the number 125,000.

From that point on that was the maximum number Franks used. There was also a lot of effort by Rumsfeld and the White House to pare the number down further.

The theory was that a small, fast and deadly force would topple the Hussein regime and be greeted as liberators. There was very little thought outside the uniformed military as to what would happen to Iraq once Saddem fell. Therefore, Rumsfeld never saw a need for a large force.

It is interesting that whenever there is a discussion of responsibility for the ineptitude in Iraq Rumsfeld is mentioned, sometimes Cheney or even Tenet. Bush, the Presdient, is almost never comes up.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

The military could never effectively secure Iraq with the number of troops committed. And that was ultimately Rumsfeld's call.  Eddie-george

And how many times did we hear Bush say he was relying on the commanders on the ground for that decision?  that if they thought they needed more forces, all they had to do was ask?

Hear any commanders on the ground asking?  Right; neither did I!