Don't blame Rummy for the Apaches.That is not the "light" that is being talked about.
This is from one of James Kitfield's articles on the Iraq war; Rummy is about as senior a "senior civilian" as can be found:
govexec.com
According to Army sources, the Army's own initial analysis of the Iraq war reflected much more ambivalence about the battle plan and its relevance for future wars. At senior civilians' insistence, for instance, the Army substituted Apache helicopters for heavy-artillery systems. Yet on the Apaches' first deep strike over Baghdad suburbs—the kind of urban environment that characterized much of the Iraqi campaign— virtually all of the helicopters were damaged by ground fire; one went down, and its crew was captured. Moreover, a later attack by Apaches using modified and more-cautious tactics hit relatively few enemy targets.
"We thought from the very beginning that the war plan was too heavy on Apaches," said a senior Army officer involved in developing and executing the Iraqi Freedom campaign. "We also conducted our own analysis because we knew that certain people would use this lessons-learned exercise to rewrite the history of this war in a way that would prove their personal agendas in terms of where the Army should be headed."
Mark Helprin has written some cogent commentary on the Iraq strategy that addresses the light-heavy debate. Some appears here:
claremont.org
Before the Iraq War, high officials were seriously considering an invasion force of 500 backed by air power. The numbers climbed steadily: 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 25,000, 40,000, 50,000, 60,000, and so on, with the supposedly retrograde "heavy army" prevailing finally, and 300,000 troops in the theater. When offered vehement advice to go into Iraq with massive force and many times overkill, a brilliant and responsible senior official responded, almost with incredulity, "Why would we need the force that you recommend, when in the Gulf War we used only 10 percent of what we had?" In the Gulf War, we did not occupy a country of 23 million.
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