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Iraq is a large piece of Real Estate...and has around 27 million people. The last report that I read is...we have something less than 150,000 troops in theater. The ratio of head to tail in the military used to be 10-1. In other words out of the 150,000 troops in theater about 135,000 are basically not combat forces but in one way or another are support forces.
Now the military has made several organizational changes over the past several years so the head to tail ratio may be slightly higher. Even if it has been doubled (which I do not believe that it has) that would mean instead of 15,000 combat forces there would be 30,000 combat forces, trying to control a large piece of Real Estate and 27 million people.
Several retired Generals stated prior to the invasion expressed a fear that we were going in light and I expressed the same fear. As it turned out it was the right size force to accomplish the defeat of Iraqi forces...but any one should have known that to control the country and stabilize it...would take a much larger force. The Administration seems to have failed to take this into consideration (civillian micro management). There has already been a call for more troops being intoduced into the theater...but Rumsfeld (and I assume the President) is resisting this (cvillian micro management).
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