October 20, 2004

Where We Stand (II)

By Douglas Hanson
Part II: The Fight for the Central Region [Editor's note: Part I, The tactical fight for Iraq, can be read here] Democrat Senator John Kerry is attempting to make political hay out of Ambassador L. Paul Bremer's controversial statement that when he arrived in Baghdad in early May of 2003, there weren't enough troops to halt the looting and end the chaos within the Iraqi capital.  Certainly, the ambassador is entitled to have his opinion on the situation as he found it on May 6, 2003. But, as an editorial in the Wall Street Journal notes, Bremer's timing may be a little off.  Such a request would go through the proper military channels to the National Command Authority, not directly to the President. In other words, the request would have gone from the V Corps/CJTF—7 commander through the Theater Commander of CENTCOM, and thence to the National Command Authority (NCA).  As it turns out, no such request ever reached the NCA. John Kerry and other critics on the...(Read Full Article)