by Bob Geiger, http://www.opednews.com/
When Army Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 25, 2003 to discuss preparations for a possible invasion of Iraq, he was asked by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) to estimate the size of a successful occupation force after victory.
“Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably a figure that would be required,” said Shinseki, a highly-decorated officer with almost four decades of service, including extensive combat duty in Vietnam. “We’re talking about a post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that’s fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems.”
…Shinseki was immediately jumped by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Rumsfeld said publicly that Shinseki was “far off the mark” in his prediction, while Wolfowitz called his views “wildly off the mark” and said, “I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down.”
The Village Voice even reported that a “senior administration official” said that Shinseki’s estimate was “bullshit from a Clintonite enamored of using the army for peacekeeping and not winning wars”.