Posted on 05/19/2008 5:05:45 AM PDT by SJackson
The war in Iraq is in its sixth year — and we, the public, are in our sixth year of reading warring accounts about it.
The most recent is Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez's "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story." Gen. Sanchez, a senior ground commander in Iraq from June 2003 to June 2004, faults L. Paul Bremer, the top civilian in Iraq from mid-2003-04, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for the errors and mishaps of the occupation.
The new Sanchez book follows Douglas Feith's new book "War and Decision." The former defense undersecretary, who oversaw many original plans for postwar reconstruction of Iraq, makes the case that the State Department and Mr. Bremer thwarted Defense Department efforts to hasten Iraqi autonomy and form a new Iraqi army. But Mr. Bremer himself, in "My Year in Iraq," complained about lack of support from both military and civilian officials like Gen. Sanchez and Mr. Feith.
And don't forget "At the Center of the Storm" by former CIA Director George Tenet or "American Soldier" by Tommy Franks, the commander who oversaw the 2003 invasion. Both offered their own versions of where others went wrong.
Memoirs by those involved in some way in the Iraq war (or the broader war on terror) have grown into an entire industry. Former counterterrorism director Richard Clark's "Against All Enemies," former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer's "Imperial Hubris" and former Ambassador Joe Wilson's "The Politics of Truth" all tell stories of how someone else did them in.
What are we to make of all these contradictory accounts?
(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemag.com ...
The people doing the most finger pointing are usually the most guilty.
I dunno, you tell me.
He couldn’t handle the job so now he writes a book. BIG DEAL.
It’s not called the Fog of War for nothing.
"Okay, in World War Two, lead by Democrats if I recall correctly, there were overall some 14 million men and women in in American uniforms and the use of nuclear weapons was allowed. Okay, give me that and I'll give you an end in sight!"
Also, the Allied bombing campaigns had few if any restrictions. The difference between total war and limited war.
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