thatcybersecurityguy.com/WarStories1.htmlAn Air Force base is a very active place to be. There is constant noise, crazy situations, emergency vehicles, and activity in general. Two or three weeks before the war started (give or take a few days) everything was grounded on the base. It was like 9-11 all over again. No planes in the sky, just silence. It was eerie, just like it was for you in the aftermath of 9-11. For us soldiers on the base, we knew that this was the message that meant all hope was lost. We were going to war and no diplomacy on earth was going to stop this war. The grounding of the aircraft was to conserve fuel and build up fuel reserves that would be needed by our aircraft to conduct the war destroying Iraq. There was not much to do during those weeks so we just kind of went about our business wondering when the war would begin. Then on March 22, 2003 engines began firing up all over the base.

To understand the significance of this, I believe that Ahmed Al Jaber Air Base was the greatest
concentration of military aircraft, bombs, and firepower in one place that the world has ever
known. Turkey cut off U.S. use of their air bases so those planes and hardware where diverted to the Ahmed Al Jaber Kuwait Air Base. Not only that the carriers based off shore dispatched many of their planes to Jaber because of the cost saving in fuel to reach their Iraqi targets. There was what looked like miles of planes at the Jaber Air Force base. I kept thinking what on earth do we think the Iraqi's have that demands this incredible, this massive concentration of military hardware. As my book has already illustrated the German Sixth Army ground forces was the most formidable military force on earth during their creation, but their air power did not come close this mass of air power. To reiterate the Germans thought their air force was up to the task of refortifying their army during the war which it was not.

When our coalitions limited ground and unlimited air forces were unleashed they quickly destroyed all the formidable Iraqi military capabilities within one month. A lesson learned from WWII was to quickly win a war you must overwhelm the enemy with crushing firepower. However, the historical lesson the Bush Administration ignored was it took one million men to occupy Germany after the war. One would think that as history repeats itself our political leaders would learn from histories previous mistakes. It was obvious to me as a common soldier that we could not occupy Iraq, a country of over 50 million people, with 170,000 troops.

This was a "What were they thinking!" moment that I could not believe was happening. In February 2003, the U.S. Army's top general, Eric Shinseki, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that it would take "several hundred thousand soldiers" to secure and occupy Iraq.
However, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz disputed that figure stating that the post-war troop commitment would be less than the number of troops required to fight and win the war.