I heard a snippet of John Kerry’s comments from the other day. He was talking about how he would have had a plan for winning the peace in Iraq. Naturally he didn’t provide any details of his plan but that’s to be expected. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight it’s really easy to say we should have done this or that. What stuck me is that he doesn’t seem to remember the one of the basic facts of war. That fact is that no plan survives contact with the enemy, that’s why they are called the enemy. Being the decorated combat vet that he claims to be he should have that fact seared, seared into his memory. I am sure that the Pentagon and White House had all sorts of plans in place for different scenarios in Post war Iraq and most of them got tossed out the window once the invasion started. The saying that I used in the title comes from the Marines, “Improvise, Adapt, Overcome.” I believe it’s what Americans do best. We understand that no plan can cover anything and we adapt. That’s what we are doing In Iraq on a daily basis. If Kerry has a better plan I would be interested to hear it. I would also be interested in hearing how he would react when that plan went out the window.
Well, I got to say, your use of the marine slogan is amazing. The only problem is that you have it completely wrong. W didn't have a plan. He was told he needed 200,000 or more troops by General Shenseki. He fired him. He was told by several former pentagon planners that billions would be needed to restore power, sewers and potable water and he ignored them. He fired the Iraqi army without first securing their weapons and failed to guard the weapons depots. These are the weapons killing our troops today. The simple fact is that Kerry has always improvised, adapted and overcome and for this he is called a flip flopper. The real flip flopper is W. No WMD, No second U.N. Resolution and the funny thing is that since Hussein was only ordered to cooperate with inspectors or face serious consequences and since the inspectors were allowed in and since there were no WMD, Saddam was by default, fully cooperative with the UN resolution and therefore, there was no legal justification for "serious consequences". Further the only legal justification W has offered is that Saddam had vilolated the cease fire of 1991, but since there were no WMD, he hadn't and furthermore, although Schwarzkopf accepted the cease fire, he did it on behalf of the UN sponspored coalition, not the U.S.A. so only the UN could void that cease fire. Would that W were as great a man as his father. The fact is that even though Saddam was an evil man, no country which signs the UN charter can legally attack another without Security Council permission unless troops are amassed on their border or a threat of attack has been issued.
Posted by: John at September 23, 2004 03:54 PM