THE COALITION v. the coalition

There has been a great deal of debate surrounding our current “coalition of the willing", and how much of a coalition it really is. I found some interesting statistics which highlight some important points,

"During the 1991 Gulf War (according to U.S. Central Command's official history of that conflict), 37 other nations took part, sending a total of 800,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, as well as 300 combat support battalions, over 225 naval vessels, and 2,800 fixed-wing aircraft. Those aircraft flew 112,000 sorties and dropped 87,000 tons of munitions on Iraqi targets. Among the nations sending at least one army division were Egypt and Syria. Now that's a coalition."

GET OUT OF TOWN!!! Yeah, I had no idea either...WE EVEN HAD ARAB COUNTRIES FIGHTING ON OUR SIDE!! Pretty damn amazing what effective diplomacy can accomplish. Kudos to Bush Senior...

Now lets examine our current "coalition",

"All told, according to the report, they're contributing about 24,000 troops. The British alone are supplying about 8,000. So the remaining 30 countries have a total of 16,000 troops in Iraq—an average of just over 500 troops per country. The United States has about 130,000 troops over there—more than five times as many as all the other 31 countries combined."

Let’s do some quick math, that means according to official U.S. records we have 776,000 less soldiers from other countries in this coalition then we did in our last COALITION....

We don't have a single ARAB nation fighting with us...

Hmmmm....

What I don't understand is how Republicans are unable to grasp that when Democrats criticize the coalition’s strength and size they are not criticizing our allies, or demeaning the work they have done and continue to do. They are criticizing the Bush administrations failure to effectively mount a COALITION like we had in the first gulf war. A coalition that would have lessened the burden on our country’s military and added legitimacy to our peace effort. Just imagine if we had Egyptian and Syrian soldiers on our side…would Arabs be firing at other Arabs…would Iraqis still view us as an invading force…unfortunately we’ll never know.

But what do I know...Compare the two sets of statistics.... decide yourself.