[QUOTE=Sargent;16403][QUOTE=Culpeper;16395]That is my biggest fear right now. That Congress will, in effect, create a massacre by trying to run the war from within D.C. This sort of massacre happened after Vietnam. It happened after the Gulf War. And will surely happen in Iraq.


Wouldn't the Commander in Chief bear a large portion of that responsibility? In each of the cases cited, it was the President who made the decisions that led to a situation that Congress (ie, the people) ultimately found objectionable and not in American interests. If he is the one to decide to use military power, if he is the one to set the strategy, if he is the one to set the expectations for that strategy, and so forth, isn't he similarly responsible for the outcomes? If only in the current example, had OIF turned out to be a success, would anyone be running to give the credit to Congress for _supporting_ the President's policies? In at least the Vietnam and Iraq 2 cases, we are dealing with military interventions that American administrations unilaterally _chose_. If an administration chooses a conflict and does not even have a sensible strategy to maintain public support -- let alone achieve the policy objectives -- whose fault is that? Call me crazy, but I put the responsibility for that on the administration.
There is a lot of "He's" in that statement. I'm seeing Congress setting a timetable that the CIC is finding not in the best interest of everything you stated is his responsibility. You are never going to find public support for going to war. Even the "America First Committee" which included Charles Lindbergh, objected to FDR declaring war against Nazi Germany.

Charles Lindbergh provided Americans with a portrait of the European war that differed substantially from the one conceived by the Roosevelt administration...
You can pick and choose and change the names around a little with the above quote and you will get something similar to your response and the Iraq War. But that don't make it right.