The Night of the Generals (A DAMNING article from our friends at Vanity Fair)

[MADem]

Six character studies of military leaders who worked for the Rummy Pentagon.

It's telling. Worth reading.




Newbold, who had spent his career commanding infantry and led the Marines into Somalia, believed that Rumsfeld's figure was absurdly, dangerously low; the only question was whether he should say so. True, he'd risk Rumsfeld's famously withering wrath. True, ultimate authority lay with the civilians. True, such objections should ideally come first from the superior officers sitting mutely nearby. And, true, war with Iraq still seemed far-fetched, even preposterous. So he said nothing. And now, billions of dollars and immeasurable heartache and more than 3,000 buried American soldiers later, he has not forgiven himself. "I should have had the gumption to confront him," he says. "The right thing to do was to confront, and I didn't. It's something I'll have to live with for a long time."



Eaton, a 53-year-old West Point graduate who'd commanded the infantry center at Fort Benning, Georgia, had gotten his orders barely a month earlier. The new force was a low priority to Rumsfeld, he says; it was called "the New Iraqi Corps," or NIC, until a linguist on Eaton's staff noted that nic meant "fuck" in Arabic. "It was stunning how cavalierly this whole thing was approached," says Eaton, whose father, an air-force fighter pilot, had been shot down over Laos in 1969 and never found. But at first he was gung-ho. He scoured the Internet for information about Iraq, reread T. E. Lawrence, reviewed the histories of other occupations. Once in Baghdad, he set up an office in one of Saddam Hussein's old palaces and augmented his skeletal team. But with the pre-existing Iraqi Army first disintegrating, then summarily dissolved by edict of the American provisional-authority administrator L. Paul Bremer III, the obstacles were daunting.



The can-do attitude was entirely in character: no general was a more reliable cheerleader for the American mission. But it was all an act, Batiste now says. Throughout Rumsfeld's pit stop in Tikrit, Batiste was actually fuming: about Abu Ghraib, about the decision to disband the Iraqi Army, about Rumsfeld's "shitty war plan." But no one watching—including the reporters—would ever have known, nor did Di Rita, who had accompanied the secretary and who says the whole visit bordered on a "lovefest." "Do I wish I'd said something in front of all that press there?" asks Batiste, who had served as Wolfowitz's senior military assistant at the beginning of the Bush administration. "Maybe, but we don't air our differences in public." Di Rita says that if Batiste had wanted a private moment with Rumsfeld he could easily have had one. But even that, Batiste says, would not have helped. "I didn't trust Rumsfeld a bit," he tells me. "I had seen the way he treated other officers and discounted their advice. He wasn't going to listen anyway."



In January 2004, Riggs, an enlisted man who had been awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross in Vietnam, had another, far more fateful, run-in with Rumsfeld: defying the Rumsfeld party line, Riggs felt the army should be bigger, and said so, in print, to Tom Bowman of The Baltimore Sun. In his 39 years in the service, he complained, he'd never seen it stretched so thin. Bowman, now at National Public Radio, subsequently reported that when Wolfowitz saw the story he angrily summoned General George W. Casey, then the army's vice chief of staff, to his office to explain such effrontery. When Casey didn't come quickly enough, Wolfowitz went to him and chewed him out loudly enough for staffers outside the office to hear.

Not surprisingly, Casey then called Riggs. "He was searching for my ass," Riggs says. Casey skewered him for contradicting the administration's position, told him to "stay in your lane," then demanded to know when Riggs planned to retire. He'd already put in his papers, Riggs replied. (Wolfowitz says he recalls neither Riggs's comments about the size of the military nor talking to Casey about them, and says he did not go down to Casey's office to yell at him about them. "If was punished for speaking out, that is very wrong," he says.)


But there's one catch: the Swannacks are no longer much of a family. His twins are grown, and he's separated from his wife. "A heartless robot," he says she's called him, and he relates it incredulously, mournfully, for he's still trying to patch things up. He lives alone, in a rented place he's turned into a shrine to the 82nd Airborne, the legendary paratrooper corps he commanded from October 2002 to May 2004, and a gallery of Saddam Hussein–abilia. His fractured family helps explain why the toughest of the six dissenting generals is also the most fragile and regretful.



A signed photograph of former president George H. W. Bush hangs in the home of Lieutenant General and Mrs. Paul Van Riper, in Williamsburg, Virginia, near his enormous library on the art and science of war, not far from the bullet-scarred helmet and belt he wore in Southeast Asia. "To Rip and L.C. with so many thanks for your hospitality, with great pride in your service to the U.S.A.," Bush the elder wrote, after staying with them once a decade ago. But Van Riper isn't so high on Bush's son. "Unless something in the next few years happens, I think historians will nail him," he says.



http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/04/iraqgenerals200704?printable=true¤tPage=all

[Captain Hilts]

1. The military people in the Pentagon were against this war. Political appointees were for it.

So, I think the protest at the Pentagon is a bit mis-placed, especially after the resignation of Rumsfeld.

[yellerpup]

2. I can't wait to buy the magazine.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda--but who hasn't wished they could do things differently. Now they have no power to make a difference. I wouldn't want that as a legacy.:kick:

Edit to add kick.

[MADem]

3. The last guy profiled, number SEVEN, actually (six if you eliminate the retired

General who is last up in the snips) has no pic. His story is the most damning, though. Here he is illustrating an article for Time http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1181629-2,00.html that he wrote, that tells us the war was a mistake:



This guy was a victim of flagrant, vicious, cruel, unrelenting, meanspirited, childish ABUSE from Rumsfeld. He was the DOO (dog doo, in his case) -- Director of Operations--for Rummy, and the stories he recounts about Rummy's Napoleonic ABUSE OF AUTHORITY are only the very tip of the iceberg. That's where you can see the HELL that was the Pentagon under Rummy. You can also see how weasels like Pete Pace got their job. Suck up, move up.

Here's what's even worse. There were a SHITLOAD of motherfucking (beg pardon to mothers), asswipe assholes who gleefully, cheerfully PILED ON in the most craven, cowardly, chickenshit fashion, making fun of this guy, who was worth ten of each one of them on a bad day. The Pentagon as a High School Girl's Bathroom, full of Heathers, I guess--if the Heathers all had high and tights and were scrambling over one another to write themselves up for awards they did not merit (but Rummy would happily sign for his crowd of acolytes) to completely devalue the meaning of them, making those who did earn their bits of ribbon so ashamed of the things that they reverted to just wearing the top three as a subtle form of protest.

Those people know who they are, too. They have to live with themselves, but they're so devoid of introspective ability, they probably don't realize precisely how much they demeaned themselves in their immature little games of cuts and insults. Royal bastards. You still see some of them around, too. IMO, a purge is needed when the administration changes, in a BIG way. It might not be a bad idea to pull a few people back who suffered the GOP long knives, so we have a modicum of competence in the upper ranks.

In the summer of 2000, the Marine Corps commandant, James Jones, picked Newbold to be the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or J3, supervising 300 employees at the Pentagon. It's probably the most important three-star job in the military, a well-worn stepping-stone to four stars and, maybe, commandant. Still, Newbold says he really didn't want the job; he enjoyed commanding troops more......Rumsfeld—newly arrived, eager to assert his authority over what he considered a flabby and recalcitrant military and a Pentagon filled with Clinton holdovers—looked for targets, and Newbold, who actually didn't much respect Clinton (he thought him a "weather vane," devoid of core beliefs), was in plain sight. "Greg was kind of the first one to catch that full in the face," says a retired admiral who watched it happen. "Rumsfeld wanted to come in and kick a few butts, and Greg's was the butt that was kicked."

Newbold witnessed many Pentagon briefings in which an always exasperated Rumsfeld forever harped on the incompetence all around him—"Can't anyone count numbers?" he might say—and says others got it far worse than he did. Still, he says, the secretary of defense once abused him so badly that he was moved to complain to Rumsfeld's senior military assistant, Admiral Edmund Giambastiani. If Rumsfeld ever so disrespected him again, Newbold said, he would "put his stars on the table"—that is, resign. "And Admiral Giambastiani said, 'Oh, Greg, you know, it's too bad, but that's the way he deals with people, and he doesn't mean anything by it. It's just his style.' And I said, 'It isn't with me. You make sure he knows it.'

"When I hung up, I realized I had done something fairly consequential, so I informed the commandant, and I informed General Myers," he continues. Myers, too, defended Rumsfeld's poor manners to him, also saying he treated everyone like that. "I said, 'You should never put up with it,' " he recalls. "General Myers worked a different way than I did. That means he's probably more mature and wiser and has much greater judgment on these things." Underlings sensed Newbold's frustration, though he never voiced it to them.....Of far greater concern to him was the headlong rush to war in Iraq. It was apparent early on—from two or three days after 9/11, when, with the smoke from the smoldering Pentagon still in the air, Newbold told Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, of plans to go into Afghanistan. "Why are you going into Afghanistan?" he says Feith replied. "We ought to be going after Iraq." (Feith has previously denied saying this; Newbold says he'd take a polygraph on the point. Feith declined to talk to Vanity Fair.) It simply isn't possible now, says Newbold, to fathom how "extraordinarily inappropriate" Feith's comments sounded at the time. Then, at a meeting a few months later, as the Americans chased the leadership of al-Qaeda, he says, he heard Wolfowitz say essentially the same thing. In each instance, Newbold's reaction was the same: "Who cares about Iraq? We have this three-penny dictator, this bantam rooster of no consequence. Besides, they're quiet now anyway—who cares?" (Wolfowitz says he never disputed the need to go after al-Qaeda; the issue for him was whether a war against Saddam Hussein could proceed simultaneously.)

Then came what was, to Newbold, that fateful meeting in late 2001 when Rumsfeld requested the war plan for Iraq. Newbold had just begun his slide show, describing the size of the force and means of deployment, when the belittlement began. "As was his style," Newbold says, "he had already declared the answer, and had already categorized anyone who might think differently as—these are my words—antediluvian, Cro-Magnon, backward-thinking, hopeless. It was so pointed, so derogatory, so negative about the number that General Myers then said, 'If not this number, then what number do you think ought to have?'"

It was, Newbold says, a "horrible question." I ask why. "Because that question ought to be answered by those who know most about how to put together a plan that can accomplish the mission," he tells me. "It was no more appropriate than for me to suggest play-calling to Joe Gibbs of the Washington Redskins." Rumsfeld's alternative estimate of troops needed was "imbecilic, preposterous," but Newbold failed to object. According to Newbold, so did Myers, and so did Pace, who, when Myers retired as chairman, would be elevated to his spot. "Funny how that works," Newbold observes.

[Captain Hilts]

4. Folks, "high and tights" is a reference to crew cut hair-doos. As you were. nt

[MADem]

5. Bwahahahahaha.....

I'm too insulated, I guess. I'm trying to wrap my mind around imagined alternative meanings!!!

[SharonAnn]

8. Like jeff Gannon's haircut in his porn photos on his "Escort Service" website.

[MADem]

11. Or that Dirty Sanchez lad who had his pic taken with Coulter, Hannity, Newt and so on NT

[yellerpup]

6. The arrogance of these administration warmongers

Chickenhawks, toxic narcissists, liars, murderers. There is a place for them in the world, and that is in court at the Hague. I feel for these military guys who didn't realize that their chance to speak out and act on their conscience would pass by so quickly and disappear and I thank them for speaking out now. The Time article is dated April 9, 2006, three years to the day after the fall of Bagdhad. He says (about pulling out of Iraq then): It would send a signal, heard around the world, that would reinforce the jihadists' message that America can be defeated, and thus increase the chances of future conflicts." I think our enemies knew then that we were already defeated. Thanks for the extra info, MADem.

Edited to add quote.

[MADem]

7. That whole environment was toxic.

It's nice to be retired, frankly. I don't tell anyone who doesn't already know what I used to do, either!

[SharonAnn]

9. There's a lot of that in business today, too. Jack Welch may have personified it.

Outsiders just don'tusually hear much about it, but it's rampant.

I'll never forget sitting outside a Sr. Vice-president's office, waiting to present a request for special discounts on a multi-million $ order. He was chewing out the Vice-president who reported to him.

I've heard salty language before, but this was really something. I'd never heard the "F" word (not faggot) used as a noun, adjective, verb, adverb, etc. all in one sentence. At times, it was confusing to figure out what he was saying. And, the absolutely disdain with which he spoke to the vie-president, the insulting tone of voice, the attempt to demean him utterly.

After hearing that episode, I asked around and learned that was a pretty typical interchange with the Sr. VP. I lost total respect for him as a "leader" and even lost a lot of respect for those who put up with it. I don't think that accepting abuse does anything but destroy a person.

I know, life is not simple and corporate life is not simple, but that kind of behavior is way over the line.

[MADem]

10. There's just no excuse for 'abuse of authority' in any line of work.

Damn. That incident sounds pretty harsh, and quite, dare we say, Rumsfeldian.

That's the sort of time you'd love to get the bastard on tape. If you're ever called in to his office, put your videophone round your neck on a lanyard, or on a clip at your belt, and turn it on!!