Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
While the vast majority of people will agree with that statement -- especially including Congress critters, many civilian 'strategists,' pundits and budgeteers -- no one with any serious involvement or experience in combat will agree.

They'll tell you you have to figure the worst thing you could run into, plan, equip and, very critically, train for that and realize that something will still happen you didn't figure on you will have to deal with...

Undertrain and underassume and you'll pay, as we have seen recently; overtrain and cautiously assume and you'll prevail -- as has also been proven but not recently.

Murphy and all that.
Yes and no. You also have to recognize that some of our worst training/preparation models have originated with the military. It's easy to claim that "those pesky civilian 'experts' cause all our problems," but that would be incorrect. The American military has in many cases proven to be its own worst enemy when it comes to training, preparing, and learning from its own experiences.