>From: "R.A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Sent: Nov 22, 2004 11:35 AM >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Subject: Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
... >I'm pretty heretical about this. I think if we had decapitated Iraq, went >after our military objectives, like securing what was a threat to us, >including Iraq's senior military and political leadership and their weapons >stockpiles, and left political order to emerge there on its own, like we >did in Afghanistan, we could have done it with Rumsfeld's original 50,000 >troop estimate. It seems like there would have to have been someone to take over in a fairly clean way, or we'd have wound up setting off a civil war. Note that in the Kurdish parts of Iraq, there was someone to take over, and those parts are generally not a problem for us. (Once it's not our people getting shot at, we probably don't care that much if it's a pain for someone else to police.) But I think the parts of Iraq that Saddam was still ruling had few high-profile leaders with forces that could have taken over quickly--he wasn't especially fond of potential rivals. Maybe we could have cut a deal with some local strongmen and gotten something stable together with minimal US involvement if we'd done it early, I'm not sure. ... >Cheers, >RAH --John
