Posted on 08/13/2007 2:13:04 PM PDT by bnelson44
BAGHDAD: General David Petraeus looked out from the Black Hawk helicopter at the early evening vistas of Baghdad rushing by 150 feet below, pointing at bustling markets, amusement parks and soccer fields, scattered through neighborhoods where miles of concrete barriers stand like sentinels against the threat of suicide bombers.
Pressing the "talk" button on his headset, the slightly built 54-year-old general, the top American commander in Iraq, said glimpses of the normal life that have survived the war's horrors helped boost his own flagging spirits, especially on days when signs of battlefront progress are offset by new bombings with mass casualties, the starkest measure of continuing insurgent power across Iraq.
Then, he said ruefully, he wondered whether he "should have taken that civilian job" before accepting what many see as the most unpromising command since General Creighton Abrams Jr. in Vietnam. Abrams took charge, in 1968, when that war was going badly, and American opinion was running strongly in favor of a pullout.
Petraeus's task may be tougher still. When he was appointed to his job six months ago and promoted to full general, President George W. Bush cast him as a man known for aggressive, innovative thinking on counterinsurgency warfare who could take the nearly 30,000 extra troops Bush ordered deployed to Iraq in January and turn the war's tide with a "surge" aimed at securing Baghdad and its surrounding "belts."
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
At least Abrahams got a tank named after him.
You mean Abrams. ;-)
There’s a reason why I was in the Air Force.
Me thinks the Abrams tank got it’s name more for what LTC Creighton Abrams did in WWII than what GEN Creighton Abrams did in Viet Nam...
Creighton Williams Abrams Jr. (Sep 15, 1914, Springfield, Massachusetts - Sep 4, 1974, Washington, D.C.) was a United States Army general who commanded military operations in the Vietnam War from 1968-72 which saw U.S. troop strength fall from 530,000 to 30,000. He served as Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1972 until shortly before his death in 1974. In honor of Abrams, the U.S. Army named the XM1 main battle tank after him as the M1 Abrams.
"On April 23, 1945, Will Lang Jr. wrote a biography called "Colonel Abe" for Life (magazine)
Abrams was known as an aggressive and successful armor commander. General George Patton said of him, "I'm supposed to be the best tank commander in the Army, but I have one peer: Abe Abrams. He's the world champion." His unit was frequently the spearhead of the Third Army during WWII. Abrams was one of the leaders in the relief effort which broke up the German entrenchments surrounding Bastogne and the 101st Airborne Division during the Battle of the Bulge.
He was noted for his concern for soldiers, his emphasis on combat readiness, and his insistence on personal integrity."
“The importance of sober assessments - and, by implication, of shedding the rose-tinted view of the war that has strained Congress’s patience with Iraq commanders in the past - has been one of his insistent themes. Talking to American officers during a weeklong counterinsurgency course at Taji, just north of Baghdad, he put it squarely. “We need forthright reports,” he said. “We’re not trying to sugarcoat things, or put lipstick on a pig, or anything like that.”
Those of us who have, rightly it turns out, called those army press releases nothing but useless nonsense deserve an apology. Again, to win this war, happy feel good announcements are just as harmful to winning this war as the constant drumbeat of negativity by the liberal media.
We weren't arguing, we were agreeing! I just excerpted the first paragraph of the bio I linked to, and you quoted the best part.
Likewise, a great book on the development of the Abrams Tank, from the days of the XMBT-70 on up is King of the Killing Zone by Orr Kelly.
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