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zPoint: The controversy surrounding statements by these retired generals focuses on two broad issues:
1. Is current U.S. policy regarding militant Islam, the Middle East and the war in Iraq fundamentally flawed, and who bears responsibility?
2. Are retired military officers entitled to make public their opposition these policies?
Below we summarize what the generals have been saying.
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SENIOR MILITARY SPEAK OUT IN OPPOSITION TO IINVASION OF IRAQ AND CALL FOR RUMSFELD'S RESIGNATION
“Third Retired General Wants Rumsfeld Out” by Thom Shanker
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/world/middleeast/10military.html
Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold (USMC, ret.) has called the invasion of Iraq “a stategic blunder,” and “an unecessary war” and a distraction from the real effort to counter the terrorist threat. [link to Time Magazine article below]. He joins two other retired senior officers who have recently criticized the Iraq war and called for Rumsfeld’s resignation: Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton and Gen. Anthony C. Zinni.
Newbold article:
--“Why Iraq Was a Mistake-- A military insider sounds off against the war and the "zealots" who pushed it” –article in Time magazine by Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold (ret.)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1181629,00.html
--Insert link to Feb. 11, 2006 NYT article: “THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: THE MILITARY; General Says Training of Iraqi Troops Suffered From Poor Planning and Staffing” (requires fee to access)
--Link to Gen. Eaton’s Op-Ed article for NYT (March 19, 2006, “A Top-Down Review for the Pentagon”)—requires a fee to view.
--Find ref./link to Gen. Zinni’s April 2 TV interview on NBC’s Meet the Press saying Rumsfeld should be held accountable for mistakes in Iraq and should step down. (description in article in April 3 NYT: “THE REACH OF WAR: DISSENT; More Calls for Rumsfeld to Leave” – (can’t access it without a fee.)
Some Newbold quotes from NYT April 10 article (referring to Time Magazine article, link above):
The decision to invade Iraq, Newbold wrote, "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."
General Newbold served as director of operations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2000 through the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the war in Afghanistan. He left military service in late 2002, as the Defense Department was deep into planning for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
"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 Newbold wrote.
“...a fundamentally flawed plan was executed for an invented war, while pursuing the real enemy, Al Qaeda, became a secondary effort."
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USA Today Story includes Conrad Crane. Good quotes & info
To find it I searched on [conrad crane army war college].
I think you could track down a lot of stuff on assessments of the war by the military. It will be harder to get good quotes from prominent military types, but I think you will stumble on them if you do this larger projecct. (One possibility.)
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So what would an honorable foreign policy for the U.S. look like?
Military opinions on Bush and the Iraq War:
Heading:
“Support for Bush and the war in Iraq is declining among military professionals”
According to the 2005 Military Times Poll, support for President Bush and for the war in Iraq has slipped significantly in the last year among members of the military’s professional core.
“Approval of the president’s Iraq policy fell 9 percentage points from 2004; a bare majority, 54 percent, now say they view his performance on Iraq as favorable. Support for his overall performance fell 11 points, to 60 percent, among active-duty readers
of the Military Times newspapers. Though support both for President Bush and for the war in Iraq remains significantly higher than in the public as a whole, the drop is likely to add further fuel to the heated debate over Iraq policy.”
Military Times, January 5, 2006
http://www.militarycity.com/polls/2005_main.php
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William Odom, Lt. General (ret.). Former chief of Army Intelligence and head of the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration:
"the greatest strategic disaster in our history."
quoted San Francisco Chronicle, March 19, 2006 [still need to track down original source.] "White House no longer sees quick end to difficult war"
by James Sterngold.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/03/19/MNG3SHQOCR1.DTL
What conservatives are saying about Iraq:
James Phillips, national security expert, Heritage Foundation
Iraq is potentially far worse that the bruising U.S. experienced in Vietnam. [attributed to Phillips, don't yet have direct quote.]quoted San Francisco Chronicle, March 19, 2006
Others:
David Mack, former U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and organizer of a pre-war State Department study on how to rebuild Iraq, largely ignored by the Bush administration.
"Americans would like to think that for all we've done, we should have gotten something really good for our efforts...We just have to accept that we are not going to be happy with the outcome. In fact, nobody over there in the region is viewing any of this as being positive...Did I imagine when we went in things would become this bad? No, I never envisioned we'd have this disaster." quoted San Francisco Chronicle, March 19, 2006
Conrad Crane, Middle East expert at the Army War College.
"What we've learned is that you cannot impose a Pax Americana solution...You are not going to have a Western-style democracy, and you're not going to have a market economy."
quoted San Francisco Chronicle, March 19, 2006
Other:
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist: co-wrote a study earlier this year that estimated the real long-term costs to the U.S. economy, due to everything from higher oil prices and the long-term care of grievously wounded soldiers to interest payments on the expanding national debt, at more than $1 trillion if the war continues, and nobldy doubts that that will be the case. (ditto source)
==Could you send me that paper.
This is a "Text Row."
You will also need to make "New Page" rows because this is how
you get sub pages for storing articles and whatever.
Possible keyword phrases:
43 world view on america (4th place at least)
47 view on america
41 american world view
207 global reach (maybe 8th place)
(to keep things in perspective, "american idol" scores 1,584,686.
This is where you can check key-word phrases:
I'm not looking for what people search on most,
but what they search on some and you can beat all but two of the competing pages on that search.
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"the greatest strategic disaster in our history." William E. Odom
link to article
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| Iraq-Oil |
Use of military for oil access |
| mmm |
http://zfacts.com/p/216.html | 09/08/08 16:15 GMT
Modified: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 20:05:40 GMT
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Carbonomics
Fix the Climate
Charge OPEC
Free Book
(till publication) |
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