II. Objective of my analysis

Some of what I am about to say might not make sense right now, but it is necessary to say it so that the reader can have in mind what I am trying to do in discussing in great detail the war game known as Millennium Challenge 02 (MC 02). In some significant ways I feel that MC 02 was a success, meaning that it validated some new concepts and approaches and that it taught many lessons. However, I nonetheless feel that in other significant ways MC 02 was flawed and contributed to what I see as a bad plan for the Iraq war. Taken alone, what happened in MC 02 was not at all bad. However, when MC 02 is viewed in the context of the plan for the Iraq war, serious concerns are revealed, and that is the ultimate purpose of my analysis. Stated differently, if there had not been an invasion of Iraq, and if there was no major military action of that scale in the next two years, harsh criticism of MC 02 would be hard to justify. But there was a war with Iraq, and there can be no doubt that the results of MC 02 played a role in the plan for that war. Thus, what happened in MC 02 is very relevant to showing why the plan was a bad one.