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Nailing the Guilty
Now that the election’s over, President Bush needs to deep-six his candidate hat and get serious as commander-in-chief. His first priority should be to hold accountable those defense and intelligence chiefs and their high-level underlings responsible for the many grievous, even criminal, mistakes that have occurred in Iraq on their watch.

Without a constructive critique of what’s gone down in that beleaguered country – a no-holds-barred appraisal that actually changes America’s ill-conceived counterinsurgency direction – we'll be stuck in a protracted struggle that will only get uglier as the terrible weeks, months and years bleed by.

Meanwhile, give or take a few captains and colonels, not one senior-level perp’s been sacked. And we’re talking about the brass responsible for gravely consequential life-and-death screw-ups such as: insufficient troop allocation for the occupation phase; premature disbandment of the Iraqi army, police and other security forces; unrealistic initial planning and amateur execution during Round One of rebuilding a new Iraqi army; top leadership dereliction of duty that allowed the prison abuses; and the shocking inability to understand the very nature of the war in which our fine soldiers are engaged.

I constantly hear the chant that we must support our troops. But what I see is more superficial lip service than serious consideration for our warriors’ welfare. If our top generals truly supported the troops, for example, they would have acknowledged that we were about to become engaged in a long-term insurgency campaign – and planned appropriately – long before the first tank shocked-and-awed its way into Iraq....