NY Times Scoops Iraq War Plan: Defeat Enemy, Don’t Let Them Defeat Us

It’s about time. We haven’t had a plan leak in ages.
I may just be in a snarky mood (waiting for coffee to brew), but this particular example of the genre strikes me as particularly low on substance:
President Bush has settled on a war plan for Iraq that would begin with an air campaign shorter than the one for the Persian Gulf war, senior administration officials say. It would feature swift ground actions to seize footholds in the country and strikes to cut off the leadership in Baghdad.
The plan, approved in recent weeks by Mr. Bush well before the Security Council’s unanimous vote on Friday to disarm Iraq, calls for massing 200,000 to 250,000 troops for attack by air, land and sea. The offensive would probably begin with a “rolling start” of substantially fewer forces, Pentagon and military officials say.
So, there will be an air campaign, followed by ground actions? You don’t say!
Now, the lack of useful detail in a story describing our coming war plans is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. But it’s amusing to watch the Times attempt to make a story out of what looks to be a one-note leak: that yes, there is a war plan, and yes, it’s essentially ready to go at any moment.
Given that Iraq is allegedly going to make up their mind whether to do this the proverbial hard way or the less-hard way this week, I don’t think we even need to bother with the traditional ritual of figuring out whether this leak was deliberate on the administration’s part or not…