[DoodleDawg]

I read the Rick Atkinson Liberation Trilogy a few months back and, man, Monty was a colossal jackass. It gave me a huge appreciation for Eisenhower's skills in just holding the alliance together.

Atkison wasn't very complementary on Bradley, Simpson, Patch or most of the other U.S. commanders. We seem to have won the war almost in spite of them and not because of them.

[KC Burke]

Atkison in some other writings had shown himself to me as big leftist Bush basher and lionizer of Petreaous. Despite reading the first book and finding it okay, I could not bring myself to spend the money on the other two.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

What it made me understand was that generals are very much like corporate executives running different divisions of a giant conglomerate. A lot of ego, a lot of jockeying for position, a lot of politics. But almost irrelevant to the actual running of the business.

I didn't think Bradley came off THAT badly, but he was definitely playing the game, too. On the other hand, I knew Marc Clark was bad, but I didn't realize how bad.