From MISTAKE to INSANITY

James Grant of "Interest Rate Observer" fame, was invited to a trip to the Mideast, sponsored by the US Central Command, a production of the US Department of Defense. Here’s just a bit of what James writes:

"The war in Iraq and Afghanistan is odd in more ways than one. High on the list of anomalies is the contesting parties’ grossly unequal expenditures on the business at hand. The United States is committing 198,000 troops, 1,318 aircraft and 48 warships to the defeat of terror in the Middle East theater (which the brass hats pronounce ’thee-A-ter’). It is spending $120 billion this fiscal year to suppress an enemy whose whole tribal and political orientation is shifting, and whose ground strength is unknown but reckoned to be in the neighborhood of only 10,000 people. There is, on the other hand, no mystery about the terrorist’s (or insurgent or civil warriors) naval power, air power government organization or tax base. They have none"

Comment -- The war in Iraq has progressed from mistaken intelligence to mismanagement to arrogance to stupidity to denial to its current state of insanity.