"BUFDRVR" wrote in message
...
He set the *overall* objectives, not individual tactical objectives. As
far as
allocating adequate resources, Bush played the hand he was dealt. I
suppose
Bush could have delayed the operation until congress authorized an
increase in
U.S. force manning, then waited for that increase in manning to become a
reality, but even if he's to win a second term, he wouldn't have see that
increase take effect.

If you can't afford to do it right, maybe you should consider not doing it
at all. Especially in a case where doing it wrong can have disastrous
consequences. With (admittedly) 20/20 hindsight, can you honestly say we are
better off now than if we had never invaded?

Franks was told to defeat the Iraqi army and capture
Baghdad. If Franks was never told that securing the known NBC sites was
important then it is hard to hold him responsible.

By this last statement I take it you have no military experience.
"Important"
is a relative term, during a war (and even in peace) somethings are more
important than others. Because seizing Baghdad quickly was of a *higher*
priority than securing *suspected* WMD sites, doesn't mean that was not
important.

Fair enough: I should have said that the importance of securing this site
was set too low, given the potential consequences of not securing the site.
Setting the relative importance of various objectives, especially
non-military objectives, was not Franks' responsibility.

We had a choice to make in regards to priority, we choose to sieze
Baghdad. If we had chosen to secure all *suspected* WMD sites prior to
seizing
Baghdad and the Iraqi army had begun lobbying Sarin filled artilliary
shells
killing both coalition personnel and innocent Iraqi's, you would have been
up
in arms over that choice.

I absolutely agree that moving quickly was critically important. Nor am I
suggesting that we deployed a battalion to cover each possible WMD site
(including Granny's still). By all accounts, however, Al Tuwaitha was
exceptional (recent and reliable reports about hundreds of pounds of
radioactive material). If we couldn't divert the resources to secure that
immediately, perhaps we should have waited a little (at least, for example,
until the troops had redeployed from Turkey).