I think it is just another case, of either myopic strategies of how this war was to be handled, or just plain old bad management from the outset, Strick; the Catch 22 that Bush finds himself in.

There was never a question of not being up for the job, outside of the usual vaguaries being propounded in the lead-up, of "... it's not going to be easy...", and the like... rather akin to getting a little bit of pre-emptive damage limitation in, in the event that all hell might eventually break loose.
With all the military expertise at its' disposal, not to mention its' hard and software, where was the miscalculation made for this one? And just as I suspect that our own troops were sent into Iraq too hastily (in that, for one, they were grossly ill-equipped), I also am open to the idea that there was a certain 'let it happen first, we'll deal with the flak when and if it happens' mindset involved by the time we launched 'Shock and Awe'.
Bush even said that he would go it alone, if necessary! What flawed information could he blame for making that statement? Did his generals tell him this was logistically feasible?
The focus of the 'Occupation', as I now hear the Coalition presence there referred to by an increasing number of journalists in their reportage, is on how to contain the present situation. Not a sausage about the ongoing(?) search for those WMDs, that everybody is convinced are there. It's all about hostages, popular uprisings, and civil war.
We have been listening to the line that 'no one said it was going to be easy', and the continual optimistic take everybody (who is anybody) has on it. How more often can the 'insurgents' repeat the TV pictures we saw of the bombings and subsequent mutilation of the 'civilian contractors' that gave rise to this recent turn of events, though? Ad nauseum, as far as I'm concerned (and it takes a lot to make me sick!). One thing that myopic strategies do have a lot in common with each other, is the unwillingness of the policy maker to fully appreciate the capacity of the 'terrorist'; who they are, what they do, and what drives them.

There is no 20/20 hindsight needed when it comes to the management of the Iraq war. Well, there shouldn't need to be, in any case. There is no excuse for the shoddy manner in which this exploit into the unknown was executed. If we've conveniently shelved the WMD issue, lets look a bit more closely at the actual job itself. I would like to know what the Bobby Fischers of the military command figured as they studied the board. And if they were 'in the loop', or not.

There are a few countries that are about to withdraw their troops; Kazakstan, for one, and I think the Ukraine and Bulgaria are set to follow suit. Whether those countries would have been part of the Coalition, given a different American Predident, or not, will be a question best left to the ever growing amount of memoir writers.
But as the American election approaches, and as the Coalition members sniff the wind to see which way it is blowing, are we likely to see a shift away from this united Alliance, with 'smaller' countries breaking away more and more from it, if the Bush Administration continues to lose that credibility it will certainly need to get re-elected?

There have been quite a few times during 'The War Against Terror' where our support system haven't got it right, but the buck should always stop at the one place. To claim 'systematic problems' is to evade the issue; the Predident is there to open those channels of communication. If he takes his job seriously, that is.

The decision by that Iraqi battalion is symptomatic of a sense of common bonding setting in, and that never bodes well. It means that the military option has already run its' course. Although the British army are suffering casualties as well, our bedside manner, being cultivated in Northern Ireland for one, seems to work much better with a population that we, relatively speaking, have no real bias towards. The American army combatants, on the other hand are on a sort of a jihad themselves, by the looks of it; fuelled perhaps by some perception that if you're killed, you must be guilty..., and there are widely reported instances of 'overkill' in many areas of their procedure. It dosen't make one popular among the natives.

It also seems that we have to accept the present 'American way' of doing things...., as if it were some tried and trusted method.
Fact is, is that the Bush Administration is dragging everybody deeper into the quicksand with their ill-planned, and mis-managed action. If that Coalition, for instance, was in Afghanistan at the minute instead, then they could have perhaps have kept an even closer eye on Saddam. and decided 'at a time and place of our choosing' whether to give a damn or not, if he gassed his own people.
Who knows....


Jim