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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (224065)	10/14/2007 6:51:50 AM
From: unclewest	Respond to of 793964

No, Major Montague shot back, it was more complicated: the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top commanders were part of the decision to send in a small invasion force and not enough troops for the occupation. Only Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff who was sidelined after he told Congress that it would take several hundred thousand troops in Iraq, spoke up in public. “You didn’t hear any of them at the time, other than General Shinseki, screaming, saying that this was untenable,” Major Montague said. Shinseki had three "combat" tours in Vietnam. He understood insurgencies and guerrilla warfare. He was perhaps the only senior general left who did. He predicted the massive civil unrest. He knew what it was going to take to provide security and avoid an insurgency. Rumsfeld did not want to hear it. He was fixated on his new more mobile army concept. The West Point cabal did not have the courage to demand to fight the war that had to be fought to win. USAF reached for stardom with a joke called, "shock and awe". The USMC is designed to win battles and they have prevailed where deployed on battlefields. The US Army is designed to win wars and ... you decide! USAF and USNAV provide transportation and supporting fires. Anyone who thinks we are going to win wars with taxi drivers and aerial bombardiers in overall command is nuts, and our young mid-level officers know it. But we have no other choice...unless we dig deeper into the ranks and find new leadership blood.