Rumsfeld, The Iraq Study Group, new Democratic hawks

Donald Rumsfeld was an entertaining, and effective SecDef, however, a reasoned case can be made that many of the things that aided his effectiveness were simply wrong in hindsight.

It's now clear that we should have been expanding the military since 9/11 and I'm convinced that Rumsfeld played a key role in quashing that endeavor, for instance. I'm not talking about 'the draft', I mean simply upping the monthly and yearly number of recruits.

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Don Surber has a post up that is causing me some concern about The Iraq Study Group:

Robin Wright of the Washington Post asked Baker if all 79 recommendations are implemented if there will be success in Iraq. Baker hemmed, hawed and said no.

The report itself said: "There is no path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved."

Read whole thing here.

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Several bloggers have noted that many people (including some Democrats) are talking about
sending more troops to Iraq. This is a good idea, but why now? What has changed in the last few months that makes this a good plan now when it wasn't such a good idea this past June, or even June of 2005?

There's an old adage about closing the barn door after the horse has gotten out, and maybe this loops back to Rumsfeld. A much bigger issue is where these troops will come from?

Applying Occam's leads me to believe there's much more going on here than meets the eye, and that concerns me greatly.