To extend my previous response regarding Shinseki and the common expectation 
of civil disorder following the fall of a totalitarian regime:

> But I'm still waiting for Michael to cite that true prophet, whom Bush 
> should have heeded.

Q. Explain the reasoning of the head of the U.S. Army, Gen. Shinseki, on how 
important the first days after the fall of Baghdad would be.

A. Shinseki of the Army drew not only on his experience in the Balkans, 
trying to administer a fractious region postwar. [He also drew from] all the corpus 
of evidence that had been produced by the Army War College, by every other 
group that looked into this, to say that there was a crucial moment just after 
the fall of a regime when the potential for disorder was enormous. So there 
would be ripple effects for years to come, depending on what happened in those 
first days or weeks when the regime went [down] ….

...there was a kind of bidding game that went on between the civilian 
leadership and the Army, where the Army and its allies in the other forces were 
saying, "We'd like about 400,000 troops to go in." Rumsfeld's idea was more like 
75,000. Through a process of negotiation, the U.S. finally went to war with the 
low 200,000s of troops in Iraq. 

 
--http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/invasion/interviews/fallows.html

Wirt Atmar

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