wombat_socho

The point wasn't that he had less than some arbitrary level of WMD, it was that he had it at all and was apparently willing to share it with terrorists. I think the intel folks can be excused for thinking that 1) Iraq has WMD, 2) Iraq supports terrorists, therefore 3) Iraq could supply terrorists with WMD.

Don't get me wrong, I respect General Shinseki for being Old School and keeping his mouth shut in retirement when he could clearly reap huge rewards by taking a public position in opposition to the Administration. His friction with Rumsfeld was over a lot more than Iraq, though. They clashed a lot over the kind of Army we're going to have in the 21st century, and Shinseki was definitely on the side of buying more stuff intended for the Big Throwdown in Central Europe such as the Crusader SPA system. While it's traditional for the top civilians in DoD to attend retirements of senior generals, it's also true that those generals have the prerogative of setting the guest list, and as the Wikipedia article says, that list has not been made public and Shinseki won't discuss it.

There is criticism from the Right, though it tends not to get much play. (Probably because it confuses the blow-dried fools in the MSM.) I would cite Jerry Pournelle and Pat Buchanan as having been against the war in Iraq from the beginning, as well as ex-Republican James Webb, who's running against George Allen for the Senate on the Democrat ticket. Criticizing the conduct of the war is one of those things that's gotten poisined by the partisan sniping that's gone on since the 1980s - while there are definitely criticisms to be made, not too many people in the GOP or the "hard" libertarians want to be identified with the anti-war left, who are the folks usually screaming about contractors, Halliburton, etc.

It is not *just* about numbers, but also about deployment and intended result. I don't fault the military in uniform for the current state of affairs; I have too many friends in uniform who are doing their level best to make good on a bad situation. If there is anybody who I think is incompetant, it is Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith and their ilk.
It's usually the civilians who screw things up, but on the other hand there have been occasions when the suits have been right and the generals wrong.

I think the jury is still out, and I don't like the look of the evidence so far.
I would humbly submit that most news sources don't present a very positive picture of Iraq and largely omit the very real accomplishments of our troops, our allies, and the Iraqis themselves in favor of reporting the latest terrorist act, especially if it involves a lot of dead civilians. I don't watch television any more and long ago stopped reading the Star Tribune, and most of what I read online is actually more libertarian than conservative, with the exception of the milblogs. Oddly, they tend to have a more positive take on things.