Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Here's a Question For You...

cvillelaw at Democratic Central reminds us that, on this day in 1990, Iraq announced it's intentions to annex Kuwait...which led to the Gulf War. Later in his post, cvillelaw gives a brief synopsis of the war (which we all know how it went), but he states that by the time we decided to go to war, we had a troop buildup of over 500,000 ready to go.

My question is this...since we disposed of Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party, have we ever had 500,000+ troops fighting in Iraq?

As far as I've seen, it seems we've kept that number under 200,000. Now, I'm not making calls to escalate the troop number, but why did we use 500,000 troops stop an invasion...and only 200,000 or less to start one? I know we had troops on the ground in Afghanistan at the time the Iraq War started, but since the Iraq War itself ended (and this turned into an occupation), why have we been over there with such a smaller force if there is so much ground that needs to be covered to stop the insurgents?

Of course, my numbers could be wrong, so if they are I would appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction over this.

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