I was expecting more from the shock and awe, too. Maybe it's one of those things you had to be on the receiving end of to fully appreciate? I think the Military industrial complex has to have these little incursions from time to time. One, to make money with which to maintain themselves and two, as a means of training their warriors. Being a warrior is akin, I suspect, to your first experience having sex. You can be instructed on how to do it, watch other people do it on the porno movie but until you actually flop down and do the bump...you're just not experienced in it...an experienced killer being much better than an non-experienced one. So, you send em to war to gain experience and make real warriors out of em. Three, you got to get some real-time testing of your equipment, too. Lets you and the rest of the world know...hey, these things really do work! Making for something of a deterrent effect. The Mil industry complex can't just say that they work and expect everyone to believe...you have to prove it every once in a while. The pols can't just say we think Saddam is a scum bucket so we're killing him at high noon tomorrow. I think killing another countries leader is actually a crime. He did invade Kuwait which was the real beginning of the exercise. A valid reason, I think. Besides, Saddam was an evil scum bucket and needed to die. What was done in the wrong way was Libya's Kadaifi.

This is all probably not really right. I just thought I'd throw out a contrarian point of view to chew on. 😁