New Strategy Vindicates Ex-Army Chief Shinseki

[Moloch]

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 — After President Bush told the nation on Wednesday night that he was ordering a rapid increase of American forces in Iraq, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki was not among the retired officers to offer instant analysis on television.

But the president’s new strategy, with its explicit acknowledgment that not enough troops had been sent to Iraq to establish control, was a vindication for General Shinseki, who as Army chief of staff publicly told Congress as much just before the war began in 2003.

First vilified, then marginalized by the Bush administration after those comments, General Shinseki retired and faded away, even as lawmakers, pundits and politicians increasingly cited his prescience.

“We never had enough troops to begin with,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said just before the president’s televised address. “A month or two ago we found out the Army is broken, and they agreed that General Shinseki was right.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/washington/12shinseki.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[rodeodance]

1. article says Bush/ WH had harsh comments about Shinseki

Gen. John P. Abizaid, the departing commander of American forces in the Middle East, told Congress late last year, “General Shinseki was right that a greater international force contribution, U.S. force contribution and Iraqi force contribution should have been available immediately after major combat operations.”

In his prime-time address on Wednesday, even President Bush said the main reason past efforts to stabilize Baghdad had failed was that “there were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents.”

The acknowledgment was far different from the harsh administration rebuttals after General Shinseki electrified Washington with his blunt warning that victory in Iraq would require more troops than were being deployed for the invasion.

[cap]

2. Sen. Graham was asleep at the switch at best

and at worst equally to blame for supporting the insane policies promulgated by this administration that they could understaff the military.

It is amazing how many facts about the past five years have come out in since November.

[CBHagman]

3. Contrast Shinseki's behavior with that of the administration.

From the Times article:

General Shinseki has kept a strict public silence since retiring in June 2003 and would often say to his associates, “I do not want to criticize while my soldiers are still bleeding and dying in Iraq.”

And this:

The general, who throughout his career was known for his selfless, or at least self-effacing, bearing, did not go before Congress on that day in February 2003 planning to stir things up. But he is also not one who backs down easily; he had risen to the top of the Army after surviving grievous injury in Vietnam, and under withering cross-examination by Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, he spoke matter-of-factly.

“Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required” to stabilize Iraq after an invasion, he said.

“We’re talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that’s fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems,” he added. “And so it takes a significant ground force presence to maintain a safe and secure environment, to ensure that people are fed, that water is distributed, all the normal responsibilities that go along with administering a situation like this.”

He comes off as a soldier's soldier, and a very wise and humane man, unlike the callous little boys -- Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, Wolfowitz -- who strut and preen and boost their own egos and play soldier.