Reply #60: USMC 69-71 here

[Jonathan50]

In WWII the US inducted, trained, equipped and deployed over 16 million troops between late 1941 and mid 1945.

A lot of those troops were draftees.

Would anyone like to argue that "the greatest generation" did a poor job in that war?

We fought the two greatest military machines on the planet to unconditional surrender in less time than we have already been in Iraq.

We had over 400,000 dead troops in WWII.

That is what "total war" is, not the pissy little effort that we are doing in Iraq.

It's not the troops fault, it is the civilian leadership who is at fault for the massive FUBAR that is Iraq.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009469.php

"The secretary of defense continued to push on us ... that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."

Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like occupation.

Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.

"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.

"He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."

...."In his own mind he thought we could go in and fight and take out the regime and come out. But a lot of us planners were having a real hard time with it because we were also thinking we can't do this. Once you tear up a country you have to stay and rebuild it. It was very challenging."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Shinseki

He (Shinseki) is famous for his remarks to the U.S. Senate Armed Services committee before the war in Iraq in which he said "something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would probably be required for post-war Iraq. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz publicly disagreed with his estimate.

On November 15, 2006, in testimony before Congress, USCENTCOM CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid said that General Shinseki's estimate had proved correct.