Just another November surprise from the media.

WASHINGTON (AP)—A series of secret U.S. war games in 1999 showed that an invasion and post-war administration of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, nearly three times the number there now.

And even then, the games showed, the country still had a chance of dissolving into chaos.

In the simulation, called Desert Crossing, 70 military, diplomatic and intelligence participants concluded the high troop levels would be needed to keep order, seal borders and take care of other security needs.

The documents came to light Saturday through a Freedom of Information Act request by George Washington University’s National Security Archive, an independent research institute and library.

“The conventional wisdom is the U.S. mistake in Iraq was not enough troops,” said Thomas Blanton, the archive’s director. “But the Desert Crossing war game in 1999 suggests we would have ended up with a failed state even with 400,000 troops on the ground.”

There are about 144,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, down from a peak in January of about 160,000.

A week after the invasion, in March 2003, the Pentagon said there were 250,000 U.S. ground force troops inside Iraq, along with 40,000 coalition force troops.

What’s sad is that this report is nothing new.  It’s been reported on back as far back as 2003, and General Zinni (who led the war games) was talking about the study publicly as far back as 2002.  Yet here we have the media bringing up old news as though it were new news right before the election. 

Convenient, no?

Anyway, where this study is wrong is the idea that idea that 400,000 troops were needed to invade Iraq.  That’s just plain wrong.  Our invasion of Iraq and defeat of Saddam’s forces was a rousing success.  We defeated that nation’s entire military in less than a month.  We couldn’t have been more successful.

Where the study is correct, in my estimation, is the fact that we needed more troops in Iraq to help the occupation.  I think that’s probably a correct assessment, but it’s worth noting that this study represents only one opinion on the occupation of Iraq and that there was good reasoning behind the decision to keep troop levels lower.  From the beginning the Bush administration has made it clear that America is not “taking over” Iraq.  “As Iraqis stand up America will stand down” has been the mantra from the beginning of the occupation, and President Bush has meant it.  However, that’s a hard idea to advocate when the country is swarming with American troops, so troop levels have been kept as low as possible to emphasize to the Iraqis that we are not there to rule but rather there to help them establish a representative government and develop the security forces necessary to keep that government safe and operating.

Was this choice of a smaller military “footprint” in Iraq a mistake?  With 20/20 hindsight I think it probably was, but that doesn’t mean we should leap to the conclusion that because of that mistake Iraq is a failure and we should pull out (which is the conclusion most Democrats will jump to).  Iraq is not a lost cause.  We can still win, and if sending in more troops at this point will help us complete our mission then I think we should do it.

I also think that if Democrats were honest critics of the war in Iraq and were truly interested in victory there this is a policy alternative they’d get behind.  They’d be encouraging the President to send more troops to Iraq so that we can win and avoid what would be another Vietnam-esque loss for this nation should we be forced to leave with our mission not completed.

Sadly, though, the Democrats are not honest critics of the war in Iraq and they’re not interested in victory there.  Rather, they’re interested in Iraq being a failure.  They want a loss so that they can use it as a political weapon against Bush/Republicans.