"Catastrophic Success"

One more thing. Tommy Franks mentioned how our problem in Iraq has been "our catastrophic success." Bush put it another way, talking about how we expected the enemy to stand and fight so we could kill them, but they melted away and we're only facing them later.

To hear these men talk, you'd think the words "tactical retreat" had never held currency in the English language. The tactic of feigning retreat in order to lure your enemy into a tactical disadvantage, in which you have him surrounded and rendered immobile is as old as Hannibal, who is recorded as history's first general to use the tactic. He feigned retreat, luring a Roman legion into pursuit, then surrounding and slaughtering it.

So, one might safely argue that it qualifies as "the oldest trick in the book." To hear a sitting President argue that such a tactic was unforseeable and unredressable, and to hear his top general reiterate such a pathetic defense makes me sick. It's their job to take such contingencies as "catastrophic success" into account. If they failed to do so, that can not be described as anything but a military failure.