The pre-war planning that anticipated 5,000 US troops Iraq by 2006 was also predicated on the Iraqi army having assumed -- successfully -- the responsibility for security and order in Iraq. But look what happened as soon as L.Paul Bremer took charge of the CPA: he disbanded formally and with finality the Iraqi army. Thus, the very mechanism that was essential to the drawdown of the US forces was eliminated by a pen sroke. The White House press corps missed this, as have the bloggers of this story.

Who ordered the disbanding of the Iraqi army is (almost) a mystery. Bremer said "Washington ordered it" alluding to Don Rumsfled, as DoD was the agency responsible for the CPA. But when asked, Rumsfeld said that the directive came from "above my paygrade." But by all accounts, Bush was surprsed by the order. The only individual between Bush and Rumsfeld was Cheney. Who has never addressed this issue (and why haven't the press pressed him on it?).

But in the official chain of command, there is NO ONE between the SecDef and the president. So the one question crying out of clarity is, Why or how did someone NOT in the chain of command give such an order and why did not the president know of it in advance? Does make one wonder who was really running the war.

Finally, the military planning for only 5000 troops was also deceptive: DoD always had plans to turn four Iraqi airbases into US facilities to facilitate deployments in the Mid-East, requiring at least 40,000 US forces to man these bases.

I wonder how many of the "disappeared" are not being acknowledged by the CIA because they flipped sufficiently to merit re-location under an alias (at US Gov't cost, of course). It's not unheard of; consider the FBI putting Sonny G., a confessed mob hitman with multiple murders, into the witness protection program. This might explain the "disappearance" of some of the family members, too. The number, if any, would probably be at most a very very small number of those unaccounted for, but it still it might be the case of at least a a few (and their families).

One other aspect of bombing Iran the neocons ignore: what is the plan for the post-bombing phase? Is there a plan? Is the idea to flatten Iran and then just walk away? Or what? I hve yet to find where a neocon has even acknowledged the existence of these concerns, much less proferred any thoughts on the post-bombing phase. Have they learned nothing from Iraq?

i admit that i did not go to a hyper-elite school; my phd in government only came from the claremont graduate school in calif, obviously an institution greatly deficient in knowledge when compared with the "we have all the answers to everything in the world" yale that kagan attended. and while kagan was burnishing his superb, enlightened military philosophies and knowledge in the dangerous environment of new haven, i was completing 26 years of service in the marine corps and CIA.

while he was busy studying the end of the drcrepit, no-longer-threatening soviet empire, thereby giving him the great insights into the arab and persian minds he now exercises advising the white house, i was wasting my time actually being in the middle east or in washington dealing middle east national security issues. when he was born around 1971, i had already spent five years in the marines and was preparing for my up-coming combat tour in VN. thus, i would have to admit my obvious inferiority to kagan and his vast personal experience on all substantive issues. but still..

i recognize a civil war when i see one: china was a civil war in the late '40s, america's pal chaing kai shek losing it not because of US Democratic party policies, but because Mao and Chou won it (they did have some say in the matter, you know). Vietnam was at heart a civil war, in which the US made mistakes but in which also the north vietnamese had a good deal to say about the outcome.

and the past four years iraq (so brilliantly invaded on the brilliant advice of kagan and kagan-like people who have all expressed their unlimited patriotism by refusing to serve in the military they laud while so callously abusing) has been in varying states and stages of civil war. which kagan and kagan-like clones are brilliantly unable to recognize. yet their hubris is astonishingly mind-numbing.

folks, there are usually only two ways to end a civil war if you're an outsider (which we are, even though we caused the iraqi civil war in the first place): genocide by destroying the opposition population, or a political settlement. (our civil war deosn;t count because there was no kagan-like inspired intervention by a powerful third party.) as lbj and nixon both learned the hard way in vietnam, there is no purely military solution that can be imposed by an outside player. may god spare us the kagans, kristols, and their ilk for the rest of eternity.

these "super-patriots," the kagans, kristols and so forth, through their unmitigated and uninformed hubris, through their continued reliance on (unsound) theory and blinding ideology, vice realistic assessments, have terribly harmed our country and it will take decades to recover. not forgetting, of course, 100,000-plus familes of dead iraqis, 4,000 dead US troops and families, over 25,000 wounded real american heros who will never recover (unlike the kagans who have somehow decided that serving in uniform is only for the morons who didn't attend yale or work at the AEI). thanks, kagans, for showing us all the way and inspiring us -- to run your asses out of government and to never let you near a policymaker again.