How did they know this? Well for starters, who was president in 1999? Remember, those dark dreadful days of peace and prosperity, and a president who knew his ass from a hole in the ground?

THEY FUCKING ASKED. The military does these studies all the time, some of them of likely enemies and some of them of unlikely to downright ridiculous ones. Because any smart military person knows that an awful lot of wars have started for entirely stupid or unexpected reasons. Better to have thought it over ahead of time than to have a threat looming, or actual attack take place, and stand there with your thumb up your butt saying "Um, wadda we do now?"

So they wargamed Iraq. Per CNN:

A series of secret U.S. war games in 1999 showed that an invasion and post-war administration of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, nearly three times the number there now.

And even then, the games showed, the country still had a chance of dissolving into chaos.

In the simulation, called Desert Crossing, 70 military, diplomatic and intelligence participants concluded the high troop levels would be needed to keep order, seal borders and take care of other security needs.

The documents came to light Saturday through a Freedom of Information Act request by George Washington University's National Security Archive, an independent research institute and library.

"The conventional wisdom is the U.S. mistake in Iraq was not enough troops," said Thomas Blanton, the archive's director. "But the Desert Crossing war game in 1999 suggests we would have ended up with a failed state even with 400,000 troops on the ground."

Shinseiki didn't pull that "300,000" number out of thin air in that congressional hearing, nor was he exaggerating to discourage the attack. He was lowballing the actual figures, which it seems impossible that he did not know from this study. And they sacked his ass anyway.

The level of arrogance the Neocons displayed in putting their little party in the sandbox together is beyond breathtaking. Or nauseating, or even criminal. It's treasonous in every legal and constitutional sense of the word.

Nobody on Earth could defeat the US military in 2003. Nobody but Rumsfeld & Co. They beat it by sending half the force required and letting them get chewed up. And it's still going on to this day.

And they knew it would happen. Bastards.