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There is a fascinating article in this morning's New York Times, based on
interviews with mid-level officers and others, suggesting widespread discontent
and debate within the military over the failure of senior officers to give
candid advice to Rumseld and the Adminsitration about the reasoins why the
invasion of Iraq would be a mistake.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/washington/23military.html?hp&ex=1145851200&en=307b714052e595e5&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Officers making such comments as,
"This is about the moral bankruptcy of general officers who lived through the
Vietnam era yet refused to advise our civilian leadership properly," said one
Army major in the Special Forces who has served two combat tours. "I can only
hope that my generation does better someday." and
"The history I will take away from this is that the current crop of generals
failed to stand up and say, 'We cannot do this mission.' They confused the
cultural can-do attitude with their responsibilities as leaders to delay the
start of the war until we had an adequate force. I think the backlash against
the general officers will be seen in the resignation of officers" who might
otherwise have stayed in uniform."
There was also an interesting angle on Condoleeza Rice's famous comment about
"thousands of errors," casting it in a light I had not considered, as a slap at
the military and a deflection of responsibility for the Administration's own
failures:
The debates are fueled by the desire to mete out blame for the situation in
Iraq, a drawn-out war that has taken many military lives and has no clear end
in sight. A midgrade officer who has served two tours in Iraq said a number of
his cohorts were angered last month when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
said that "tactical errors, a thousand of them, I am sure," had been made in
Iraq.
"We have not lost a single tactical engagement on the ground in Iraq," the
officer said, noting that the definition of tactical missions is specific
movements against an enemy target. "The mistakes have all been at the strategic
and political levels."
Paul Alan Levy
Public Citizen Litigation Group
1600 - 20th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009
(202) 588-1000
http://www.citizen.org/litigation
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