Much has been made of the claim by Paul Bremer and others that we didn't have enough troops in Baghdad to suppress the looting and violence that followed hard upon the liberation of that city. The lack of troops has been seized upon by the president's opponents as evidence that he mishandled the post war and didn't have an effective plan to control the country. For those who want a much more trenchant analysis, however, Wretchard at Belmont Club has a must-read essay.
Wretchard reminds us of two important facts. First, Bremer claimed that there weren't enough troops available at the time he got there shortly after Baghdad fell, but he believes that the number of troops deployed there now is adequate.
Second, the shortfall was not because of poor planning but rather because the troops that had been planned for were rendered unavailable by the last minute decision by Turkey to refuse permission to the 4th Infantry Division to use their soil as a staging area for an invasion of Iraq. This caused a delay in their deployment that seriously hampered attempts to bring the looting under immediate control. Read the details, they're quite interesting.
