ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY                                       17


some 66,000 (lust over a thousand of whom were female Marines) were ashore
with I MEF.  Afloat were the 4th MEB, 5th MEB, and 13th MEU(SOC)-almost
18,000 Marines.  Taken together, these forces were close to the number of
Marines deployed to Vietnam in the peak year of 1968 and more than the total
landed at Iwo Jima in 1945.
   Obviously, the Marine Corps's deployment to the Persian Gulf, constituting
as it did the largest Marine Corps movement since World War II, was depend-
ent on the sealift provided by the Navy and airlift provided by the Air Force.
Both the sealift and airlift were magnificent.
   Contingency plans for deployment to the Persian Gulf--for all Services, not
just the Marine Corps--appear to have worked amazingly well.     U.S. deploy-
ments to the region were a logistical triumph.       In the Korean War,   un-
der-strength, under-trained, and poorly equipped American troops were flung
into battle piecemeal in an act of desperation. In some cases performance was
poor, and in many cases losses were frightftil.   In the Vietnam War, the state
of readiness of the armed  forces was much better than Korea and often
outstanding-but they were fed into the objective area with a deliberate slowness,
reflecting the gradualism of the Johnson-McNamara strategy.
   This time, as exemplified by the deployment of the Marines, the crux of the
Bush-Cheney-Powell strategy was to position a superbly equipped and highly
trained force in sufficient numbers on the anticipated battlefield.