A preview and explanation

In light of the recent media reports about the disagreements among military commanders in the opening weeks of the Iraq war (see Disagreements among military commanders over the war resurface over at Cosmic Wheel), I decided it was time to revisit my work from almost three years ago on Millennium Challenge 02 (MC 02). I began working on the MC 02 material in April 2003 and stopped on May 19, 2003.

That work was intended to be a chapter in a book on the Iraq war, and maybe some day it will be. I began researching and writing on that little topic three weeks before the war started, and by late September 2003, I had approximately 300 pages of material written and footnoted, with material for probably 300 more. I stopped that work in September 2003 to focus on the 2004 Presidential campaign. Some of that previous work has appeared on Cosmic Wheel, but I decided to post the MC 02 material on its own site so it would not clutter up my blog (anyone who has read my blog just might be laughing at that).

I will post the MC 02 material in sections. Unlike the posts on Cosmic Wheel, the posts here might not include hyperlinks for every cited source. I will make an effort to provide some links, but I cannot promise that I will be able to find links for sources that are over three years old. Also, links will not be in the body of the text. Instead, they will be in the endnotes for each section. Speaking of endnotes, I will not start renumbering in each section. All posts are intended to be parts of a single chapter, so the endnotes will keep on running from section to section. This also allows me to make more liberal use of shortened citation forms. ;-)

The next thing I will post is an outline for the material. After that, as soon as I figure out some formatting matters, I will post the sections of the material. I will make some revisions to my previous work, but for the most part, what will be posted here is what I wrote almost three years ago.