What we support and defend

[carl]

I'd opt for basing the decision on the merit of the ideas. Thus, you lose.

Yes I do, in Ken's opinion. But "as usual, others will make up their own minds. Fortunately."

That's all an aside, I intruded due to this misperception:Your recall of part of what you read is, as always, correct but your summation as occurs frequently is not. That BTW is not an insult nor is it an indication of lack of sophistication or even of ignorance, it is an indicator IMO of nothing more than a lack of experience in the mechanical aspects of fighting wars.

The bulk of the troops in DS/DS came from Europe as the to be disbanded VII Corps was moved from Germany to Saudi Arabia. It bears mentioning that the Corps was inactivated immediately after DS/DS and the large Cold War Army largely disappeared very quickly. That Army continued to disappear in smaller increments for the next nine years plus, the decline in numbers being halted only by the attacks of 9/11/01

However, your major error is "quickly" though I acknowledge that word is relative -- in the context of DS/DS, it was 'quick' only because Saddam Hussein was not very smart. Had he attacked early on and in force, even with the Iraqi Army in the sad state that it was, the outcome might have been very different. It was nice of him to allow us over six months to get deployed, train and organize for the limited objective attack . To any military guy, that six months is not quick. Picture, for example, the difference in actions during the six months from December 1941 until June 1942...

Like you say, quickly is relative. It took a lot longer to move sufficient forces to invade Normandy to England, and that is a shorter distance. A large part of that time was taken in up in creating the forces that didn't exist. VII Corps existed. And also that big pre-existing cold war army used to practice moving as fast as it could (fast of course being reletive) from one continent to another as best it could. So having that big about to be reduced army in existence was a bit of an advantage I think.

Six months was a long time in 1942. So it was lucky we had started to build up forces well before then. Existing forces helped us a lot then just as they helped us a lot in 1991.

Saddam was kind of dopey.

I you are having trouble ascertaining my position, you should ask me.