Yet another graphic reminder why we so hate the New York Times. Incidentally, Gen. Lucian K. Truscott served his country with valor during WWII in the ETO ... the grandfather perhaps of the idiot writing this screed.
Posted on 11/19/2012 6:06:56 AM PST by Zakeet
Fastidiousness is never a good sign in a general officer. Though strutting military peacocks go back to Alexander’s time, our first was MacArthur, who seemed at times to care more about how much gold braid decorated the brim of his cap than he did about how many bodies he left on beachheads across the Pacific. Next came Westmoreland, with his starched fatigues in Vietnam. In our time, Gen. David H. Petraeus has set the bar high. Never has so much beribboned finery decorated a general’s uniform since Al Haig passed through the sally ports of West Point on his way to the White House.
“What’s wrong with a general looking good?” you may wonder. I would propose that every moment a general spends on his uniform jacket is a moment he’s not doing his job, which is supposed to be leading soldiers in combat and winning wars — something we, and our generals, stopped doing about the time that MacArthur gold-braided his way around the stalemated Korean War.
And now comes “Dave” Petraeus, and the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. No matter how good he looked in his biographer-mistress’s book, it doesn’t make up for the fact that we failed to conquer the countries we invaded, and ended up occupying undefeated nations.
The genius of General Petraeus was to recognize early on that the war he had been sent to fight in Iraq wasn’t a real war at all. This is what the public and the news media — lamenting the fall of the brilliant hero undone by a tawdry affair — have failed to see. He wasn’t the military magician portrayed in the press; he was a self-constructed hologram, emitting an aura of preening heroism for the ever eager cameras.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yet another graphic reminder why we so hate the New York Times. Incidentally, Gen. Lucian K. Truscott served his country with valor during WWII in the ETO ... the grandfather perhaps of the idiot writing this screed.
http://www.cherryblossomfest.com/pdf/2012_LucianKTruscottIV.pdf
Apparently, he never outgrew his teenage rebelliousness.
Thanks for the history. I suspect Lucian K. Truscott IV has never ever worn a military uniform and possesses some animous towards his Grandfather who wore it with distinction. I can’t stand it when no nothing pussy’s are given space to rag on the military.
The phony is the one that refuses to release his records.
Nope. That is the winner. Obviously most Americans could care less...not sure why.
I believe this was written by his son, also a USMA alum and a novelist.
The Left has such disgusting contempt for the military! If the red states secede, the blue states might not object to the red states taking the military with them.
Typical liberal broad brush dropping Douglas McArthur in the same pot with little pro-faggot Petraeus. But his specific charge against McArthur is that he was overly concerned with uniform cap cat guts. Mac had his vanities but he was NOT obsessed with uniforms.
The Left hates Mac because he crossed swords with the State Department, Truman, and Soviet dignitaries.
Actually, Truscott IV briefly wore the uniform (after a legacy appointment to West Point), and was essentially drummed out for being a rabble-rouser as a Lieutenant.
...when Odungo picked Petraeus as head of the CIA all sorts of red flags SHOULD have been waving. The General who the libtards attacked repeatedly for years (everyone suddenly forgot “betrayed us”)was used as a “patsy”..... just another wheel chock under the bus
“And now comes “Dave” Petraeus, and the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. “
Obviously the New York Times is doing a hit piece on the general—part of a campaign?
And that’s about the one thing that could get
me on his side...
Now the betray us bunch wants to put John the Traitor Kerry the head of the state department or defense. Talk about a phony hero.
No matter how good he looked in his biographer-mistress’s book, it doesn’t make up for the fact that we failed to conquer the countries we invaded, and ended up occupying undefeated nations.
I tend to agree with aspects of this argument. Starting with Vietnam, it often seems we handcuff our troops to achieve a level of political correctness. But, I don't believe for one second that the New York Times is suggesting that we do whatever is necessary to win actually win a war.
Truscott was known to his classmates and fellow officers as “Luch the Dooch”. He graduated from West Point, but was thrown out of the Army for numerous petty offenses designed to advance his anti-war literary career and avoid completing his military obligation. He is the worst form of parasite on the planet and deserves to be ridiculed.
if the damn ROE’s hadnt been so damned restrictive and PC, we would have won both of these in a cake-walk, instead of trying to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of the peeps...
i dont recall any animus lately from germany or japan despite our less than PC ‘peace thru firepower’ show some 70+ years ago....
This hit piece sounds like it was written in the NY Slimes gaysex hot tub for opeders under the influence under the guidance of Jayson Blair.
The NY Slimes never learns as it charges out again to win one for the Obozo:
The Jayson Blair Affair
Can the New York Times learn important lessons from its plagiarism/ fabrication scandal?
Related reading: All About The Retrospect
By Rem Rieder
Rem Rieder (rrieder@ajr.umd.edu) is AJR’s editor and senior vice president.
We’ve been here before. Too often.
There was Ruth Shalit, the young New Republic writer who was Washington journalism’s It Girl in the mid-’90s, until she imploded with a couple of high-profile plagiarism episodes and a powerful but error-riddled assault on the Washington Post’s approach to race.
Then there was Stephen Glass, also of The New Republic, whose stories, packed with amazing, dead-on detail, seemed too good to be true. And were. Glass will long be remembered as the guy who would build a Web site to corroborate his fabrications.
Now it’s Jayson Blair, the 27-year-old New York Times national reporter who destroyed his career in a stunning conflagration of pilfered material, outright fiction and just plain bizarre behavior. (See “All About the Retrospect”)
The Times has a well-earned reputation for circling the wagons when its reporting comes under attack. It often chooses not to respond to questions about its coverage, as if it were above scrutiny. It did own up to some serious shortcomings after the Wen Ho Lee train wreck, but in a grudging, defensive Editor’s Note rather than a forthright mea culpa.
Not this time. Once the San Antonio Express-News brought a clear-cut case of piracy to its attention, the Times unleashed a posse of reporters and editors to put Blair’s national desk oeuvre under a microscope. It played the devastating findings of Blair’s serial crimes against journalism at the top of page one, with four open pages inside.
So give the Times its props for an extraordinary airing of some very dirty linen. That’s a courageous—and appropriate—thing to do. Now it faces the harder challenge.
Because the Blair report exposed a frighteningly porous management structure, one that allowed a truth-challenged journalist to not only survive but thrive, despite a blinding array of warning lights.
In April 2002, the Blair problem was so severe that Metropolitan Editor Jonathan Landman wrote in a memo, “We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now.” Blair was warned he was in danger of losing his job. He took a leave to try to straighten himself out. But—astoundingly—by December he was the national staff’s lead reporter on top-of-the-charts news: the sniper story. For the New York Times.
Worse yet, the national editor and Washington bureau hadn’t been told of Blair’s pothole-strewn track record. So no alarm bells went off when serious questions were raised about two of his sniper scoops. Editors didn’t even ask the young reporter to ID the anonymous sources on which they were based.
While the Times report pummeled Blair unmercifully, it wasn’t quite as tough on the institution that allowed him to do his damage undetected. “The person who did this is Jayson Blair,” said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Times publisher and chairman of its parent company. “Let’s not begin to demonize our executives—either the desk editors or the executive editor or, dare I say it, the publisher.”
No, let’s not demonize them. And, no, there’s no way to stop unscrupulous people from doing bad things. But there’s got to be a way to catch them more quickly—particularly when there are so many clues.
The Blair fiasco has furnished ample ammunition to people who don’t like the Times in general and Executive Editor Howell Raines in particular. Raines has been a bête noir of conservatives since his days as Times editorial page editor (although he was an equal-opportunity scold—his page was brutal in its criticism of Bill Clinton). Many on the right have claimed that Raines used the Times’ front page to promulgate his opposition to the war in Iraq. And, internally, he has broken a lot of crockery in the Times newsroom, particularly in dealing with the national staff.
You can already hear the beginnings of the Howell-must-go drumbeat.
Yet there’s no denying that the Times has done some splendid journalism in his 21-month tenure. Its performance after September 11 was nonpareil. Its coverage of the war in Iraq was very strong. And Sulzberger has made it clear that Raines is still his guy.
The rosy scenario would be if Raines, an enormously talented journalist, took away—and to heart—some important lessons from this debacle. If he harnessed a much more inclusive, much less top-down management style and a more open attitude toward his audience to his formidable skills and drive, the result would be a stronger New York Times.
And that’s the most important part of this story. Sadly, unethical journalists will come and go. The critical issue here is the health of our most important news organization.
...said the phony “news”paper
Truscott IV is to the Army and West Point what Pat Conroy was to the Marine Corps and The Citadel.
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