Power Plays
Mudville Gazette has a harsh assessment of what is going on right now in the shaping of public opinion. There is a lot of manipulation and a lot of familiar players. But not all of the players were actually on the same page, no matter how the press spun the stories.
Strangely enough, although the anti-Rumsfeld generals had been frequently quoted over the intervening months, and the elections were looming large on the American calendar, the "show trial" received scant notice in the American media.
One likely reason? The generals were able to give more specific information regarding what they would do differently than Secretary Rumsfeld - and those actions were not to the liking of their assumed supporters:
…Batiste and his colleagues offered their solution: more troops, more money and more time in Iraq.
"We must mobilize our country for a protracted challenge," Batiste warned.
"We better be planning for at least a minimum of a decade or longer," contributed retired Marine Col. Thomas Hammes.
"We are, conservatively, 60,000 soldiers short," added retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who was in charge of building the Iraqi Security Forces.
Go back and read the first links I've provided above and you'll discover - if you didn't know already - that the generals' criticism of Donald Rumsfeld was little more than the sort of inter-service competition for defense funds that has defined the upper levels of the Pentagon for years (and that Rumsfeld tried to eliminate). While this year's rhetoric admittedly rose to new and desperate levels, the underlying argument was perhaps thinner than most previous "peace time" funding debates. The eternal reality is that all services could use more money - the Air Force is currently attempting to slash 40,000 active duty members from it's pay rolls to enable funding of new systems - even as retired Army generals insist that their service is being short changed in favor of another.
Although getting Rumsfeld out of the picture was only step one, media coverage of the demands of those particular retired generals will probably vanish now that half their goals have been achieved - the remaining steps of the plan are an embarrassment to those who previously offered a large platform and amplification system for their call to arms.
But a "new direction" has been promised, and now it must be found. So Democrats are rapidly seeking a voice to fill the silence left now that "their" generals have been sent home with "mission accomplished". Here's one contender:
George McGovern, the former senator and Democratic presidential candidate, said Thursday that he will meet with more than 60 members of Congress next week to recommend a strategy to remove U.S. troops from Iraq by June.
If Democrats don't take steps to end the war in Iraq soon, they won't be in power very long, McGovern told reporters before a speech at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
That McGovern, of all people, is offering advice on how to proceed should scare hell out of thinking Americans. This man's agenda led to millions of dead people in Southeast Asia. Hasn't he killed enough people? His "peace" is the peace of the grave.
By Arlo, Saturday, 11 November , 2006 @ 7:31 am
58,000 dead Americans in Vietnam wasn’t enough?
By mokus, Saturday, 11 November , 2006 @ 7:15 pm
It was more than enough, but that’s only a rough estimate of the American dead, there were 4 or 5 times as many dead from the South and likely 7 to 10 times more from the North of Vietnam. No one knows for sure.
But, the heavy numbers didn’t pile up till after the fall of Saigon, when several million died in Laos and Cambodia. Now the Dems want to do it all over again.