OFFENSE AND DEFENSE ["The battle between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon"]

The New Yorker ^ | 2003-03-31 | Seymour Hersh

[SlickWillard]

Bump.

[epluribus_2]

As the ground campaign against Saddam Hussein faltered last week

Tokyo Rose!

[irish_links]

Slick:

When posting anything from the New Yorker under a Seymour Hersh bi-line, please add a "Unsubstantiated Propaganda Alert" parenthetical.

[tomahawk]

Seymour Hersh is a liar.

[hgro]

Anthing that Seymour Hersh says should be accepted for what it is. He sucks up to the disgruntled or those by-passed for promotion and always tries to dig up dirt.

Fortunately, most people know him for what he is.

[Nagual]

Hey SEYMOUR,
Shut the hell up.

[kjam22]

With our troops on the move again and headed for Baghdad... I'd say Rummy is still calling the shots.

[3AngelaD]

Not to mention a good, old-fashioned Projectile Vomiting Alert.

[Conspiracy Guy]

I'm sure that everyone who's anyone at the Pentagon calls this yahoo and spills their guts. Another journalist who couldn't get a job writing grocery store ads in most American newspapers spews his filth.

[PhiKapMom]

If SEYMOUR M. HERSH told me the sky is blue, I would have to go check.

This article is crap!

[mrsmith]

Everyone has an agenda. Bitter losers feeding stories to the military-hating leftist media.

My free advice to the brass is to just forget their hard feelings over Rummy's "force transformation", and remember that force transformation is a continuous thing and look to tomorrow's acquisition battles.
This is General Frank's campaign and this backbiting in wartime just demeans the military- it looks likes the awfullest cutthroat political scheming (which of course acquisition has always been- but not in public).

[Spruce]

[Howlin]

Can anybody remember the last thing Seymour got right?

[epluribus_2]

I seem to remember his story about the US getting our asses handed to us in Afghanistan. He sure works hard at that ol' aid and comfort to the enemy project. He was laughingly wrong about that too.

[ex-snook]

IN RETROSPECT:
THE TRAGEDY AND LESSONS OF VIETNAM

ROBERT S. MCNAMARA
WITH BRIAN VANDEMARK

FROM THE PREFACE:

"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why."

 

"A fascinating and extraordinarily candid examination of the errors of judgment of the 'best and the brightest' of our civilian and military leaders during the Vietnam War. This book should be read and carried throughout their careers by every current and future military officer for decades to come."
 

--LT. GEN. ROBERT E. PURSLEY (USAF, RET

[MEG33]

Are we there yet?

[headsonpikes]

RE: "martyrdom operations"

I think we should accommodate the Arabs in this activity.

I'm sure Allah can step up virgin provision, if required.

[robowombat]

Hersh is a rat no doubt about that. Unfortunately the first half or more of this article describing the turmoil within the Pentagon is dead on. Rumsfeld's distaste for Army leadership was magnified by the initial plan for Afghanistan which put troop requirements at 150k and posited a six month time line to significant engagement after creating several large support enclaves and putting a well developed land line of communication accross pakistan in place. The rapiud initial success of US uncoventional operations in Afghanistan seemed to offer the magic bullet for the Iraq campaign. Unfortunately not so. A good bit of current Army leadership reflect Clintonian practice. Timid, managerial, obsessed with irrelavancies and PC concerns and terrified of incurring casualties. The current CSA is almost a parody of these views. The stupid beret decision combines all of them, the idea that if everyone wore the same headgear it would reduce 'elitist' attitudes among airborne/ranger units, encourage 'degendering' since the same headgear would be worn by all at all times and make the US Army look more like its'coalition partners' since they mostly wear berets. But the Sec Def's attitudes have to often been one of generalized contempt for the Army as a whole. This article, unfortunately, tells some unpleasant truths.