From CNN on John McCain on military sufficiency:

McCain said the problems in Iraq go deeper than troop numbers.

"The problem we have here is that the Pentagon has been reacting to initiatives of the enemy rather than taking initiatives from which the enemy has to react to," he said.

"And the problem, when you react, you have to extend people on duty there, which is terrible for morale. There's a terrific strain on Guard and reservists. If you plan ahead, then you don't have to do some of these things.

"The military," he said, "is too small."

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware, said U.S. forces in Iraq are "still paying an awesome price for the initial failures on policy and refusal to change them of this administration, of going in with too little power and too little legitimacy."

Biden, who recently returned from a trip to Iraq, told ABC's "This Week," "We've won everything we've tried to do, including Falluja, but then we've lacked the resources to secure what we've won."

Biden said that, after his trip to Iraq, he was "less concerned about an outbreak of civil war than I am about the outbreak of civil chaos."

Biden also predicted that the Pentagon would keep troops in place until an objective has been reached, in this case the elections, "and then you're going to see them draw down again."

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Looks like a bad plan, badly executed by inept management to me. Those who were there will remember that this is what cost us the Vietnam fiasco, on two sides: one, we failed to understand the hunger for self-determination of the North Vietnamese, who saw US forces as invaders; and two, we pretended to be there to win, but we compromised on our resources and degree of intent. There is no such thing as half a war. If there are not sufficient moral grounds for going and overwhelming the insurgents flat out, taking tactical and strategic initiative and providing completely adequate numbers to do so, then we should have no war at all. Playing half the game will lose another thousand lives just because the CiC doesn't know whether he is coming or going. I wouldn't take a bullet for those reasons, myself, but then I am not a good hypnotic subject, either.



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