Its an OP-ED piece, certainly but Fred Kaplan is one of the few thoughtful journalists out there. And I happen to agree with him. And for those who think IRAQ is doing fine, please stop, really think about this and ask yourself: Why did we plan this so poorly?

http://www.slate.com/id/2105127/

This affects all of us, guys...All of us!!

It was NOT planned poorly, Munko. Wars and what happens afterwards are not planned in a sterile, laboratory enviroment. It's a dynamics....ever-chaning situation. It included human dynamics. There are always going to be adjustments that have to be made. Name me ONE war....just ONE....where Every single thing went as planned.

It was "poorly planned". Just accept that.

For example: Tommy Franks, Gen Shinseki, Gen Shalikashvili and others stated that more troops will be needed. But the PENTAGON wanted a faster, agile force. No one on this PLANET gave Saddam's Republican guards (kinda funny, huh..spineless "republican guards' ) A CHANCE against our forces. Half of them defected before we got there. Now we all realize that more troops are needed.

For example: We needed linguists and Arabic speaking people in the CPA. What did we do? We had people in the CPA who were interested in putting a REPUBLICAN PARTY face on the reconstrcution instead of a joint American/Iraqi face on it.

For example: We did not establish an immediate link with the most powerful force in the region: ALI SISTANI..

For example" We thought it was such a great idea to shove down Iraqi throats a man who has not lived in Iraq for over 25 years and is also a wanted felon in Jordan. We figured we would install our Arb version of "NORIEGA". See what happened to Chalabi now?

You still think we planned this well? JP5...I beg you to open you eyes..This is not even about BUSH or KERRY. Open your eyes and you will see that we made too many costly mistakes. TOO MANY!!

On soldiers who were given old Vietnam-era flak vests instead of new ones, which didn't start flowing in until four to five months AFTER the invasion.

Or even read the Army's own report on how logistics almost fell apart, soldiers had to salvage Iraqi equipment because they didn't have enough of their own, and how communications broke down in far-flung units. What frightens me is that against a tougher adversary, the U.S. would've suffered heavy casualties and serious set backs. We're just lucky Iraq didn't put up much of a fight.

The entire operation was poorly planned based on the excellent standards of the U.S. military. And we had the opportunity to step back and thoroughly plan the attack. It's not as if Saddam was threatened to launch a nuke, in which case our sloppy effort might be forgiven.

And Fred Kaplin's war columns on Slate are wonderful. He's one of my favorite journalists.

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Proudly a "South Park Republican"

OK - The 1991 Persian Gulf War

Hey, Wasn't the UN in on that???

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Truth is by nature self-evident, as soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear. Gandhi

We are in a terrible quagmire


...there was NO planning that was informed.

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Those who define have the power. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/...heney.ssl.html

Quagmire...yeah, quagmire...it's a quagmire...yep...a quagmire....

HAHAHAHA!!

(AS fORREST GUMP)

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES.

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"The American people have spoken. I'm not going to imitate them out of respect for the mentally retarded." - Lewis Black