Did They Know?

I cannot make that commitment responsibly."

- Mr Blair reports to MPs on US-US military strikes on Iraq, saying Saddam had again blocked the work of the weapons inspectors - 17 December 1998.

I just found this quote online from Tony B. Liar from 1998. As the US military announced that the death toll of US soldiers has topped the 1500 mark this week, with over 20,000 injured and no end in sight, the question arises, did Dubya and Blair deliberately send in a force that was under-manned and by logical extension, sitting ducks?.

The piece of the quote that really stands out is "removing Saddam through military action would require the insertion of ground troops on a massive scale - hundreds of thousands". Remember, this quote was made in 1998, using the claims of Dubya and Blair prior to the current war that fundamentally Sadam had been developing his military strength and that was why the war was necessary, wouldn`t it be logical to conclude that the "hundreds and thousands" of ground troops that would have been needed in 1998 to remove Sadam with the further condition ""Even then, there would be no absolute guarantee of success" would have needed to be more?

Furthermore, Blair ended his statement with " I cannot make that commitment responsibly"...so what changed between 1998 and 2003 to convince both leaders that this pre-requisite didn`t apply?

Its not like they weren`t warned, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army noted that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, a claim contradicted by Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld, who said that only 100,000 troops would be needed.

As the death toll for American and British troops troops mount with seemingly noone being held accountable, maybe its time for people to start asking thes fundamental question,

Did we have enough troops to conduct this war?

If not, why did we commit brave young men and women to be sitting ducks?

If the answer is no, isn`t about time we started looking at the people who made the decision to sacrifice our troops and arrest them?

Sun Tzu said: "Speed is of the essence in war.What is valued in war is a quick victory, not prolonged operations" and "while we have heard of stupid haste in war, we have not yet seen a clever operation that was prolonged. There has never been a case in which a prolonged war has benefited a country".

Peace