No Time for Problem-solving: That's Hard Work!
Ray McGovern, long-time CIA analyst and presumably one with insights on the inner workings of crime, err, politics, is another one of those heroes, speaking up when today's romans and their latterday herod-like sycophants are so testy that it can be a risky business. You probably saw him at the microphone during Conyers' session regarding the Downing Street Minutes. He reminded us then just how gleeful Bush was to have put one over on everyone on WMD - but don't ask George to get near a casket!
We should all be applauding and celebrating the few like McGovern with the courage to publicly testify to what they know and share their insights, given the beady-eyed revengeful junkyard dogs occupying the leather armchairs these days. The powers that be have been exposed, and this is when snivelers like Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney are supposed to be most dangerous.
McGovern entitled a recent article Stay the Crooked Course, reminding us that what might be marketed (or maybe just repeated over and over and over) as courage and indominability may just be inflexibility, absence of problem-solving skills, and - for those with actual insights on human behavior - sheer pigheadedness. Especially when it is a program pursued by folks who spent their entire draft-worthy years buying and cheating their way out of serving in wars they touted. George? Dick? Donald? Security alert - accountability vacuum in the Executive Branch!!
The editors of the New York Times this morning feign shock that in his speech at Fort Bragg yesterday evening President George W. Bush would “raise the bloody flag of 9/11 over and over again to justify a war in a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks.” Kudos for that insight! Better three years late than never, I suppose.
Forget the documentary evidence (the Downing Street minutes) that the war on Iraq was fraudulent from the outset. Forget that the U.S. and U.K. starting pulverizing Iraq with stepped-up bombing months before president or prime minister breathed a word to Congress or Parliament. Forget that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his merry men—his co-opted, castrated military brass—have no clue regarding what U.S. forces are up against in Iraq. The president insists that we must stay the course.
As was the case in Vietnam, the Iraq war is being run by civilians innocent of military experience and disdainful of advice from the colonels and majors who know which end is up. Aping the president’s practice of surrounding himself with sycophants, Rumsfeld has promoted a coterie of yes-men to top military ranks—men who “kiss up and kick down,” in the words of former Assistant Secretary of State Carl Ford, describing UN-nominee John Bolton’s modus operandi at the State Department. So when the president assures us, as he did yesterday, that he will be guided by the “sober judgment of our military leaders” he is referring to the castrati.
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More outspoken still has been Lt. Gen. William Odom (US Army, ret), the most respected senior intelligence officer still willing to speak out on strategic and intelligence issues. Unfortunately, you would have to understand German to know what he thinks of “staying the course” in Iraq, because U.S. media are not going to run his remarks.
Here is my translation of what Gen. Odom said last September on German TV’s Panorama program:
“When the president says he is staying the course, that makes me really afraid. For a leader has to know when to change course. Hitler did not change his course: rather he kept sending more and more troops to Stalingrad and they suffered more and more casualties.
“When the president says he is staying the course it reminds me of the man who has just jumped from the Empire State Building. Half-way down he says, ‘I am still on course.’ Well, I would not want to be on course with a man who will lie splattered in the street. I would like to be someone who could change the course...
“Our invasion of Iraq has made it a homeland for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Indeed, I believe that it was the very first time that many Iraqis became terrorists. Before we invaded, they had no idea of terrorism.”
At Fort Bragg yesterday, the president spoke of the need to “prevent al-Qaeda and other foreign terrorists from turning Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban: a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on America and our friends.” Too late, Mr. President, has no one told you that you’ve succeeded in accomplishing that yourself?
[clip]
Commenting on the farcical pre-election-campaign “intelligence reform” last summer, [Odom] wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, observing:
“No organizational design will compensate for incompetent incumbents.”
Odom is spot-on. In my 27 years of experience as an intelligence analyst I learned the painful lesson that lack of professionalism is the inevitable handmaiden of sycophancy. Military and intelligence officers and diplomats who bubble to the top in this kind of environment do not tend to be the real professionals.
And who pays the price? The young men and women we send off to a misbegotten, unnecessary war.
We should all be applauding and celebrating the few like McGovern with the courage to publicly testify to what they know and share their insights, given the beady-eyed revengeful junkyard dogs occupying the leather armchairs these days. The powers that be have been exposed, and this is when snivelers like Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney are supposed to be most dangerous.
McGovern entitled a recent article Stay the Crooked Course, reminding us that what might be marketed (or maybe just repeated over and over and over) as courage and indominability may just be inflexibility, absence of problem-solving skills, and - for those with actual insights on human behavior - sheer pigheadedness. Especially when it is a program pursued by folks who spent their entire draft-worthy years buying and cheating their way out of serving in wars they touted. George? Dick? Donald? Security alert - accountability vacuum in the Executive Branch!!
The editors of the New York Times this morning feign shock that in his speech at Fort Bragg yesterday evening President George W. Bush would “raise the bloody flag of 9/11 over and over again to justify a war in a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks.” Kudos for that insight! Better three years late than never, I suppose.
Forget the documentary evidence (the Downing Street minutes) that the war on Iraq was fraudulent from the outset. Forget that the U.S. and U.K. starting pulverizing Iraq with stepped-up bombing months before president or prime minister breathed a word to Congress or Parliament. Forget that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his merry men—his co-opted, castrated military brass—have no clue regarding what U.S. forces are up against in Iraq. The president insists that we must stay the course.
As was the case in Vietnam, the Iraq war is being run by civilians innocent of military experience and disdainful of advice from the colonels and majors who know which end is up. Aping the president’s practice of surrounding himself with sycophants, Rumsfeld has promoted a coterie of yes-men to top military ranks—men who “kiss up and kick down,” in the words of former Assistant Secretary of State Carl Ford, describing UN-nominee John Bolton’s modus operandi at the State Department. So when the president assures us, as he did yesterday, that he will be guided by the “sober judgment of our military leaders” he is referring to the castrati.
[clip]
More outspoken still has been Lt. Gen. William Odom (US Army, ret), the most respected senior intelligence officer still willing to speak out on strategic and intelligence issues. Unfortunately, you would have to understand German to know what he thinks of “staying the course” in Iraq, because U.S. media are not going to run his remarks.
Here is my translation of what Gen. Odom said last September on German TV’s Panorama program:
“When the president says he is staying the course, that makes me really afraid. For a leader has to know when to change course. Hitler did not change his course: rather he kept sending more and more troops to Stalingrad and they suffered more and more casualties.
“When the president says he is staying the course it reminds me of the man who has just jumped from the Empire State Building. Half-way down he says, ‘I am still on course.’ Well, I would not want to be on course with a man who will lie splattered in the street. I would like to be someone who could change the course...
“Our invasion of Iraq has made it a homeland for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Indeed, I believe that it was the very first time that many Iraqis became terrorists. Before we invaded, they had no idea of terrorism.”
At Fort Bragg yesterday, the president spoke of the need to “prevent al-Qaeda and other foreign terrorists from turning Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban: a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on America and our friends.” Too late, Mr. President, has no one told you that you’ve succeeded in accomplishing that yourself?
[clip]
Commenting on the farcical pre-election-campaign “intelligence reform” last summer, [Odom] wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, observing:
“No organizational design will compensate for incompetent incumbents.”
Odom is spot-on. In my 27 years of experience as an intelligence analyst I learned the painful lesson that lack of professionalism is the inevitable handmaiden of sycophancy. Military and intelligence officers and diplomats who bubble to the top in this kind of environment do not tend to be the real professionals.
And who pays the price? The young men and women we send off to a misbegotten, unnecessary war.
posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:21 PM
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