The recriminations over the Iraq War have long been raging, but now some of the war's staunchest supporters have joined the blamefest. The list of what has gone wrong is long and varied, with liberal opponents of the war and conservative supporters all having their own ideologically congenial items.

But if there's one consistent lesson from our experience in Iraq, it is to avoid half-measures -- go to war with more troops, more deadly force and more vigor rather than less. Muddling through and hoping to succeed with just barely enough resources, is a fool's policy.

As Napoleon said, "When you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna." We took Baghdad, but never with the level of commitment to ensure it would stay taken in any form worth having.

With apologies to Napoleon, if you are going to invade a country, invade a country. The Powell Doctrine calling for overwhelming force might not be applicable in all situations, but it is a reasonable rule when undertaking a major ground invasion of a country with a 400,000-man army. Instead, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld constantly bid down the U.S. invasion force.

There were sound reasons for wanting to go in relatively light, but clearly more troops were necessary for the postwar occupation. Here is where liberal hero Gen. Eric Shinseki proved right in his prewar analysis when he told a congressional committee that "several hundred thousand soldiers" would be necessary to secure Iraq: "We're talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kind of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems."

If you are going to fight an enemy army, fight an enemy army. We let Iraqi fighters escape our initial invasion out of a misplaced humanitarianism and a belief that Iraqi soldiers were the innocent victims of Saddam Hussein. Many of the Sunni fighters that we spared formed the nucleus of the insurgency. Continued...