Derb: I agree, for the most part. Although, this raises a point I’ve heard Victor Davis Hanson make. We were too careful, too “surgical,” in how we beat the Iraqi army. By destroying their conventional ability to fight we neglected killing as many Baathists as we otherwise might have, leaving large numbers with the willingness to fight. We were a bit like cowboys in a Western, simply shooting the gun out of the bad guy’s hand rather than killing the bad guy outright. There are reasonable moral and political arguments for such martial precision (particularly in a media age), but that doesn’t change the fact that winning only occurs when the other side really agrees that it’s lost.
That said, what we are doing there now is making up for that fact. I’m with Rich on this one for these and other reasons.