"In Defense of Donald Rumsfeld"

Rumsfeld's Defenders

I didn't get a chance to read the WSJ Op-Ed article by 4 retired generals named "In Defense of Donald Rumsfeld". I have enough trouble paying bills while buying a beautiful new 3,400 square foot home. I can't afford to subscribe to every news service. So I am responding based on quotes of their Op-Ed article freely available on CNN. Here.

So I did a quick check, and found out that Lt. General Thomas McInerney was an Air Force General. This is quite interesting. An air force guy telling Army and Marine Generals how to conduct land warfare. I think it is outside of his area of expertise. And to be honest, I don't know how much dealing he had with Rumsfeld while he was in service. From what I can ascertain, he retired long before the Iraq war, so I can only ascertain the General is commenting out of thin air.

Maj. Gen. Buron Moore, U.S. Air Force is also retired U.S. Air Force. Where do these Air Force guys come from telling Army and Marine Generals what real land warfare is about and that Army and Marine Generals don't understand asymmetric warfare like the Air Force guys do. ha ha ha This has got to be some kind of joke.

Maj. Gen Paul Vallely, he is retired Army so I'll take him seriously. He seems well qualified to speak on guerilla warfare given his experience in Special Operations for 15 years. He is a graduate of the Infantry School, Ranger and Airborne Schools, and Jumpmaster School. Nevertheless, he was never General while working under Rumsfeld while Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense so he doesn't really know what it is like to work under Rumsfeld's "leadership (or lack thereof)". He is only conjecturing.

Personally, I question Paul Valley statements that the dissenting Generals don't understand asymmetric warfare when in fact the Generals had strongly suggested a plan in dealing with the aftermath of Iraq, which was ignored by Rumsfeld. This is where all the asymmetric warfare has occurred and properly addressed by the dissenting Generals. Paul Vallely claims Rumsfeld "understands" asymmetric warfare and the dissenting Generals didn't. If you look at the facts, you can see that Rumsfeld had no plan for asymmetric warfare. And the dissenting Generals expected asymmetric warfare and wanted a proper plan for it. I am really disappointed at Paul Vallely. I would have expected more intelligence from someone trained in Special Operations Metholodogies.

Lt. Gen. John Crosby, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. Couldn't get much info on his background. Training and Doctrine is not the same as Infantry or Combat, so commenting on guerilla warfare is outside his area of expertise. It would be like a General from Medical division giving comments on warfare.

Here's some interesting articles:
Article.

San Francisco Chronicle.


Now for the dissenting Generals

Lt. General Gregory Newbold, U.S. Marine Corps. He was the military's top operations officer before the invasion of Iraq. He wrote, "[The decision to invade Iraq] was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions -- or bury the results." "I retired from the military four months before the invasion, in part because of my opposition to those who had used 9/11's tragedy to hijack our security policy."

General Shinseki, who commanded the NATO peacekeeping force in Bosnia, testified before Congress in February 2003 that peacekeeping operations in Iraq could require several hundred thousand troops, in part because it was a country with "the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems." Rumsfeld had him replaced [for dissenting].

As early as 1998 (when neoconservatives began agitating for the removal of Saddam Hussein), General Zinni was warning that "a weakened, fragmented, chaotic Iraq" could be "more dangerous in the long run than a contained Saddam." And in 2002, as the war drums beat louder and louder in Washington, General Zinni warned that invading Iraq could create more enemies for America in the Middle East, stretch the American military too thin, strain relations with allies and cost billions of dollars for reconstruction. -- NY Times


General Zinni, who as commander of CENTCOM had prepared contingency plans for the possible fall of Mr. Hussein, also recommended that if an invasion of Iraq were pursued, it should rely upon "overwhelming force," and that a comprehensive plan for reconstruction be adopted before the war. His outline of such a plan (dealing with the protection of infrastructure, the sealing of borders, political fallout and an assortment of economic and social issues) was dismissed at the Pentagon, the New Yorker writer George Packer has reported, on the grounds that its assumptions were "too negative."-- NY Times

And finally a statement from Colin Powell:
"Serious mistakes [were made] in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad," Colin Powell, former secretary of state and Joint Chiefs chairman, said in a speech last week. "We didn't have enough troops on the ground. We didn't impose our will. As a result an insurgency got started, and it got out of control." -- CS Monitor