Fred Kagan sums it up eloquently. Kudos to the Weekly Standard for keeping up the pressure:
With more troops in Iraq during and immediately after the war, we would have been able to do the following things that we did not do:
* Capture or kill thousands of Iraqi soldiers who were at that time still concentrated in combat units and had not yet melted back into the countryside with their weapons and their skills.
* Guard the scores of enormous ammunition dumps from which the insurgents have drawn the vast majority of their weapons, ammunition, and explosives.
* Secure critical oil and electrical infrastructure that the insurgents subsequently attacked, setting back the economic and political recovery of Iraq.
* Prevent the development of insurgent safe havens in Najaf and Falluja, or at least disrupt them at a much earlier stage of formation.
* Work to interdict the infiltration of foreign fighters across Iraq’s borders.
If the U.S. Army had begun expanding in 2001, we would have been able to:
* Establish reasonable rotation plans for our soldiers that did not require repeatedly extending tours of duty beyond one year.
* Avoid the need to activate reservists involuntarily.
* Dramatically reduce the frequency with which soldiers return from one year-long tour only to be sent immediately on another.
* Let the troops that would still have been overstrained know that help really was on the way.
The U.S. military did not do these things because of Rumsfeld’s choices.
And those choices have greatly impeded our ability to win the war. I have no ill-will for Rumsfeld. He’s the object of much unfair personal criticism. He’s a deeply kind man, extremely smart, and dedicated to the public good. But his errors have alas compounded our problem. And at some point, accountability must mean something.
MALKIN AWARD NOMINEE: “Liberals love America like O.J. loved Nicole,” – headline on an Ann Coulter column at Townhall.com.
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: The NYT runs four corrections for a piece that ran almost three years ago.
The Dish 