Would they be a democratic frat boy or a republican one. I have a feeling the convention will be the blind protesting the stupid.

More like George Marshall, IMHO.

It will be interesting to see how much planning actually went into preparations for a post-war Iraq. Planning for the Occupation of Japan began in early 1942, just months after Pearl Harbor.

Gen. Shinseki was warning them about their undermanning of the post-invasion plans, but they fired him for that.

Uh, because those aren’t technically “occupations?” Aside from the DMZ in Korea, US military forces do not provide domestic security within the countries where they are stationed. In addition, military downsizing — and the fall of the Soviet Union — have made it possible to eliminate the need for the hundreds of thousands of US troops that were once stationed outside the US during the Cold War. There are, for example, far fewer US troops in Korea now than, say, 30 years ago.

So, yes, in essence, Congress has already legislated the withdrawl of overseas troops before when they mandated new troop levels in the 1990s.

It may also come as a surprise that the post-WWII occupations of Japan and Germany were better planned and better executed than the current mess in Iraq. Specifically, original plans for the Occupation of Japan called for the permanent stationing of 250,000 US troops there immediately after Japan’s surrender. However, by November, 1945, MacArthur was already telling the bureaucrats in Washington that he needed fewer than 120,000 to accomplish the occupation goals of demilitarization and democratization.