Posted on 12/07/2008 12:39:55 PM PST by Salena Zito
On NBC’s Meet the Press this morning in an interview between Tom Brokaw and Barack Obama, the President-elect said his pick to run the VA, General Shinseki, was right about the surge.
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: “I'm going to be making announcement tomorrow about the head of our Veterans Administration, General Eric Shinseki, who was a commander and has fought in Vietnam, Bosnia ...I think that General Shinseki is exactly the right person who's going to be able to make sure that we honor our troops when they come home."
MR. BROKAW: "He's the man who lost his job in the Bush administration because he said that we would need more troops in Iraq than Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld thought that we would need at that time."
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: "He was right."
MR. BROKAW: "And General Shinseki was right.”
I guess this means that the President elect now agrees with the surge by saying Shinseki was right.
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghlive.com ...
This American disaster gets worse by the hour. When it comes to our incredible patriotic troops, no one associated with the Muslim Messiah can be trusted and everything they say is, more than likely, BS.
Obama agreed with the surge when McCain made an issue of it.
Shinseki was right - if we wanted to occupy Iraq. The plan was NOT to occupy Iraq but to turn it over as quickly as possible to a provisional government of Iraqi exiles we’d already identified and readied.
But Bremer decided within the first 48 hours on the ground that he didn’t trust those Iraqi Exiles so he made himself Czar of Iraq and then suddenly it was the US in charge of everything. And for that you needed a lot more troops. But Bremer did it and Bush didn’t bother to stop him. Bremer just let the whole ‘there was no plan for after the invasion’ lie continue in the media by refusing to admit that he was given one but that he junked it upon hitting the ground.
But since Bush gave Bremer the Medal of Freedom for his work in screwing up the post-invasion plan, it’s hard to find anybody in the media who wants to put the blame on the right person.
was this the same General in charge of Iraq when the big prisoner abuse case came to light and was relieved of command for poor performance??
He is nothing more.
Actually, Shinseki’s remarks on troop levels occurred before the 2003 invasion when he estimated that a far larger force would be required than Rumsfeld was prepared to approve. He has been silent on the surge to the best of my knowledge.
However, its an interesting commment from Obama who claims to have opposed the war from the very beginning. Shinseki supported the war and advocated a larger invasion force. But then Obama seems to contradicting himself quiet frequently these days.
interesting is it not?
I don't think that he was anyway involved with the Abu Graib situation.
Hussein says he was “right about the surge”, yet he refused to acknowledge the success of the surge during the campaign??
IIRC that was Sanchez
That’s news to me about using Iraqi exiles, and Bremer deciding otherwise. Thanks. It would be nice to get a complete and valid account of this war. We sure aren’t getting it from our one party press.
Posting the same comment I had on a thread yesterday about this appointment: Where is the evidence that Gen. Shinseki has the skills to fix the long-dysfunctional VA Medical System? While acknowledging his long service and sacrifice for this country, I’m having trouble with him in this job where he does not appear to have any expertise beyond dealing with bureacratically-sclerotic organizations. His predecessor in this job was also an Army General but at least he was an MD but did not make any appreciable improvement.
With an aging veteran population, primarily Vietnam vets, and seriously injured Iraq vets to care for, the VA needs to be considered the best in the healthcare business and it is not.
No.
Bravo Sierra, Brokejaw. Shinseki retired on schedule.
You're talking about someone (That One) who was probably shown on a map where Alaska is when McCain announced his running mate. That 57 state One.
If he is in fact good at dealing with bureacratically-sclerotic organizations, he would seem to be just what the VA needs, no?
However, I've found that many peoples' leadership qualities tended to be vastly overrated and frequently situation dependent. We'll see.
“I don’t think that he was anyway involved with the Abu Graib situation. “
I think it was Gen. Sanchez, who has also gone over to the Obama camp.
right, I was thinking of Sanchez
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