I'm not quite sure if anyone else has made this point this before, but in any case it's surely correct. The Shinseki recommendation that we needed more troops to do the job in Iraq, the idea seized on by the liberal "if they only did my pet invasion right!" hawks and certain presidential candiates whose names began with the letter K and were two syllables long, could not have actually been a serious recommendation for how to do the war right. It was, as Yglesias points out, just a way of making the point that the war plan just was not feasible given current troop strength.
He wasn't ousted because he told them their war would cost a bit more, he was ousted because he told them it was impossible absent a draft.
