Originally Posted by JOC

brinkth didn't you indicate the US - Coalition had Iraq ~ stabilized with the coalition troop strength troop strength that was available? "After desert storm", this stayed at ~ 150,000 troops from (2004 to 2011)? Not including Kurds and US trained Iraq's.
The reason I mention this is would 1/2 million troops be overkill or would it have made much difference?
One thing that likely would have helped greatly would have been positive media coverage for our troops, I'm sure you know what I mean here.
Note: with the present policies in Washington I don't think we could send 1/2 million troops even if we wanted to.

It was out of control until the sunni awakening. We didn't have enough troops and the "surge" was only about 40,000 more troops who would focus on Baghdad. The surge would have failed and the civil war would have grown to new heights had we not changed our strategy and AQI not worn out their welcome, forcing the desert sheiks to come to our side. Also, at the same time the shia militias agreed to stand down and try to give the the ISF a chance, giving former insurgents amnesty and be allowed to police their own neighborhoods through the sons of Iraq program, and a lot of luck. If any one of these things didn't happen it would have descended further into chaos. Yes, we eventually were able to wrest control WITH the Iraqi Army and Police fighting right beside us. It's more complicated than that and I will elaborate more later, unfortunately the valium is kicking in and I'm not 100% at the moment intellectually.

To be continued....

Originally Posted by tetvet

I need to clarified one comment I made when I referred to the company that was the nume de plume of the CIA .

I knew that you were refereeing to the fact that Thieu was a Washington yes man. He was also terribly corrupt.
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