sane time sane place

Mr. Snow, the shiny new Press Secretary, did a pathetic job of defending Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Secretary Snow cited the "catastrophic success" of the invasion as the cause of the post-invasion problems. According to Mr. Snow, the Secretary of Defense could not be faulted with the problems that surfaced after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, ie. Abu Ghraib, 2600 Americans deaths etc. Secretary Snow also credited Rumsfeld with attempting to remake the military to better suit the post-Cold War requirements. It is true that we need a different military dynamic to address the current challenges. It is also true that there will be strong opposition to said changes. The military that is needed today does not require the level of spending on high-priced military toys that had been the norm during the Cold War. Using aircraft carriers and atomic submarines is not a cost efficient means of combating global terrorism. That was one of the downsides to the Afghanistan conflict. It wasn't expensive enough. Iraq was a much more attractive conflict because it would create the need for more defense spending- not only to conduct the war, but to also replace the equipment destroyed and weaponry used. To use Rumsfeld's own words, in Iraq there existed "real targets" as opposed to the mud huts that comprised the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
There is no credible defense for the actions and statements of Secretary Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld's critics need only replay the infamous press conference during which he was asked by a soldier why they had to rummage through dumps in order to find metal to use as armor for their ill-equipped Hummers. Rumsfeld's answer of "going to war with the army you have" quote should have been blasted out of the water the day it was uttered. There have been a lot of WWII analogies being misused lately. As concerns Rumsfeld there is an apt WWII analogy. When we were attacked at Pearl Harbor we were thrust into WWII with the army we had. We were not thrust into the Iraq war. Iraq was not an imminent threat to the USA. We had the luxury of choosing when we would invade. The US had enough latitude to decide the date of the invasion based on weather. No professional military would ever enter a conflict prepared for a best-case scenario (as we did in Iraq). Our military is considered the best in the world. As such, the military leaders should have insisted that we not invade until we were prepared for the worst-case scenario. Had this been done, the lives of every soldier killed in a lightly armored Hummer could have been saved. We did not invade Iraq prepared for the worst. We did not schedule the invasion based on preparedness. The timetable was set by non-military members of the Bush administration. The invasion of Iraq mirrors the posture of the Bush administration-arrogant and ill-informed.