I Like My Grapes Sour

Especially if you are like some retired General Officers lately. I am currently reading the book Cobra II, and while I've skipped ahead and read the chapter about OBJ RAMS and the shoot-down of Vampire 13 (which I must say, was well researched and fairly accurate by all accounts), the opening chapter reads like an OP/ED piece in your standard major east coast newspaper (which could be because one of the authors writes for the NY Times). These gentlemen pretend to get inside the heads of all the major players in the GWOT and make some bold statements about the motives and reasons about why things were done they way they were at the begining of the war. Needless to say there is a lot of finger pointing going on by people who should know better.

It seems to me that a lot of folks in the head shed have heartburn with the SECDEF. Combine this book with an article in the NY Times by GEN Paul Eaton (RET) and there is a pattern of former GO's crying in their beer about how they were checked up on or otherwise made to explain their estimates or war plans by the SECDEF. Imagine that the Secretary of Defense wants to ask the people working for him about how they reached the conclusion that certain force requirements were necessary or that X course of action is the one that needs to be taken. Maybe the SECDEF was harsh in his treatment of said GOs or didn't stroke them enough.

Methinks (without knowing the SECDEF) that these guys (the Generals) are just getting a taste of their own leadership style medicine and it doesn't taste very good does it?

Of all people a retired General should know that you shouldn't conduct a public AAR in the middle of an operation. What possible good did they expect to come of this? The goal is obvious, they want to rid us of that devil Rumsfeld. And I guess, as now private citizens they can say what they want...but I would hope that they were men enough to say these things to Rumsfeld's face before they decided to print them in a newspaper...something makes me think they didn't, but I could be wrong. See ROFASIX for his take on this.

UPDATE: Welcome BLACKFIVE readers!