Well, those who did were quickly dispatched of, or mercilessly silenced as un-patriotic or dismissed as incompetent ...Shalikashvili, Scowcroft (some said he was speaking for W's dad), Brzesinsky, O'Neal, Zinni...dare I say it, Wilson...so many voices abroad too.
I think you are listing all the objectors to the entire Iraq campaign. I'm not talking about them.
My question is where are the people that support the campaign AND have planned for post major battle operations? There must be 1,000s of them in the career military. I threw out some ideas for what I would have done post major combat operations a few months back (close down all borders, turn the country into a near police state with regions regaining normal freedoms as they stabilize, severly limit free speech initially, implement a massive PR campaign in Arabic to win the locals, implement a massive PR campaign for the folks back home showing every mass grave and every new supply of hospital equipment, etc. etc). They were just top of my head ideas (I have no training in this area). None of them were implemented, and in most case the exact opposite was done.
The execution of the largest overseas campaign since Vietnam gets a D as far as I can tell.
But conceptually, I still support the idea of removing Saddam, just think it could have been done better. Hopefully our military learned a lot, and in the upcoming Syria campaign will perform 1000% better.... |
