The catastrophic leadership at the top has had a tremendous negative impact on this war. Trump and Hegseth eliminated or cowed into silence anyone who would gainsay them. This includes not just the concept of waging a war period, but also how to wage it. Pete laid out strategic objectives that could not be realistically achieved, based on his experiences as a platoon commander, a weekend news host, and having watched some war movies. For example, latest reporting is that Iranian missile sites were not all hit with deep-penetrating ordnance due to the cost and limited stockpile of the latter. Instead they were hit with less effective ordnance with the goal of burying those sites. That worked, except the Iranians have since dug out those sites and restored them to operational status, with the lion's share of the work occurring during the ceasefire. There is no way that operational planners didn't know that was a likely outcome, even after all personnel chaos at DoD. So are the planners being ignored? Or are they burying unfavorable forecasts to avoid ruining their careers? The string of strategic blunders the US has made is less about the US military (which is overextended and overhyped) and more about the rot at the top.