committed in order to get a paycheck and leaders who took pay from them and didn't provide logistics and at the top politicians who lined their own pockets. corruption from top to bottom. and no real support from the cit citizenry of the government and no loyalty up and down the chain of command. once the momentum started, it unraveled pretty quickly. a lot of observers noticed this over the years and yet we lived with this illusion that we were doing something really profound there and trying to shape up these forces. now we see that it wasn't strong enough. the morale, the cohesion, starting at the top with the leadership of the president and his commanders, it wasn't strong enough to withstand the surge. and there was no reason to believe that had we stayed there for another year or two and kept another 5,000, that anything would have changed. and one country that hasn't been