Increasing troop strength in Iraq by 20,000 or 30,000 is insufficient and is not going to make much of a difference. What ever happened with the Powell Doctrine? I look back to General Shinseki’s testimony before the war when he testified that "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would be required to "maintain a safe and secure environment" in Iraq. This was his testimony at the time when Iraq was relatively stable. Now, almost four years later, Iraq is clearly more destabilized then it was before the war and we now think increasing troop strength to 170,000 -180,000 will stabilize the region. It makes no sense. Even at 180,000 troops we are still at troop levels less than what war planners and General Shinseki had estimated would be required before the war, which was made at the time when Iraq was comparatively stable.
We now think we stabilize Iraq by increasing troop strength to a figure that is still less than what the pre-war planners had estimated. We should either go bore into Iraq with an excessive force of the magnitude of several hundred thousand soldiers or get out and quit with the silly political bantering. These guys - Bush, McCain, Lieberman, and their ilk - are of little minds and have not come to grips with reality and it is frustrating to wait for them to catch up. Whether McCain and Lieberman ever recognize their error is anyone’s guess, but Bush will go to his grave still not realizing the colossal screw up Iraq has become and his unique inability to recognize disaster.