sirius_sir:
Thank you for reading my comment. I was not meaning that there were insufficent troops to stop people running off with Baath property. Nor was I suggesting that force should have been used to prevent that, though now you mention it, allowing it probably did suggest weakness.
We were talking about sources of humint, and I was meaning that the lack of soldiers allowed really evil men to bomb, torture, rape and mutilate over a large part of Iraq, intimidating the general population and drying up the humint.
I am a total civilian, but I don’t have a problem with expressing an opinion on this because it is a moral issue and not just a tactical one. The first signs of that terror activity should have been crushed, mostly to show strength but mainly because it was the right thing to do, because it was wrong to leave the ordinary folk of Iraq so vulnerable.
While there many differences in the details between Iraq and Afghanistan, the big picture is the same. Show the strong horse, fighting like it means to win, because that is the right thing to do, both morally and tactically.