I have written for a while that the statements of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld that say, "We are giving the Generals everything they are asking for" served two purposes. First, it propped up the generals and the military in general and made them feel as if they were not going into another Vietnam (even though they were). The going history revision in the military is that "if they had given us what we needed, we would have won" in Vietnam meant that Bush needed to make it look like they would get what they needed and/or asked for to get military (both line and flag) support.
The second purpose, and far more sinister, was to be able to make the military, and especially the Army, the fall guy if this went bad, as it has. So, now Bush can appear to make the statement that, "I gave them everything they asked for and they just pooched the war". This will bring back the belief that "War is too important to be left to the Generals".
The military, and again especially the Army, is about to learn a lesson in realpolitik a la Bush style. They are about to get publicly humiliated and told "if they had only asked" they would have gotten what they wanted and therefore it is their incompetence which caused the war to go so poorly.
As evidence of that, you will soon hear that top Generals are getting replaced and that the Command of Centcom (The major command running the war based in Tampa Florida) will be given to a NAVY ADMIRAL! Yes, you heard that right! We are in the largest ground war this Country has seen in over 30 years and it will be run by a navy admiral. No, not a marine... an admiral.
What that tells me is that they scoured the ranks of 3 and 4 star Army and Marine Corps generals and could not find ONE, (not ONE) who was more qualified to run a ground war than this Admiral (It is admiral Fallon and his bio is here).
So, this says two things: 1) the Army is a mess. They have lost command of their own speciality and have become a joke within the civilian leadership of the military establishment. 2) Whether 1 is true or not, Bush is going to set the Army up for the fall. Unlike Vietnam where the prevailing thought (in revisionist history) was that the "civilians" lost the war, it is now going to be that the military (specifically, senior leaders of the Army) lost the war.
Note: Bloomberg appears to be confirming this as well.
I also post about this at The Command T.O.C. my Blog dedicated to items Military.