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Pentagon Report on Iraq Debacle "Remains Classified"
Earlier this week, I noted an excerpt from the new book by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, where he told how Donald Rumsfeld had ordered a report by the Joint Warfighting Center of the bungled occupation of Iraq, but when Rumsfeld got the results, he'd ordered it squelched.
Sanchez writes that he was told by one of the people who'd done the study that when they'd presented their findings to Rumsfeld, he'd "just shut us down" and said "This is not going anywhere." According to Sanchez, the report validated his account that the entire Pentagon leadership knew that he'd had inadequate support when he'd been in command of the U.S. forces in Iraq after the fall of Hussein. It also showed that Gen. Tommy Franks had discarded the original plan, which called for a twelve-to-eighteen-month occupation deployment.
Sanchez added: "From that, my belief was that Rumsfeld's intent appeared to be to minimize and control further exposure within the Pentagon and to specifically keep this information from the American public."
Susanne Moore, media operations chief at the Joint Forces Command, told me today that the report actually had been finished and published in late 2006 -- but that it "was and remains classified."
So why is a historical report classified? "It has all the earmarks of an abusive classification," Steve Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy Project, told me. "The report has been publicly characterized as an embarrassing document, and an allegation has been made by an informed source that the motive for withholding was to avoid embarrassment and disgrace, which of course is not a legitimate use of the classification system. So it demands further investigation by Congress to get to the bottom of it."
Josh
Zachary
Of course it's been suppressed because it's embarassing. Crime number XXXX by these guys. Just don't expect congress to get to the bottom of this or anything else regarding the Iraq war. They don't want to, they just want you to think they do.
May 6, 2008 4:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't you just love it when these guys hold back really important stuff so they can write a book about it later and collect a big advance? Kind of like when Woodward did it, which rendered him impotent as a journalist forevermore after that.
Obama needs to jot this one down in his reminder book of the things he needs to look into once he's in office.
May 6, 2008 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
What an advance! While sitting in the Hague!
May 6, 2008 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
When Obama gets into office he will be faced with a difficult choice. He can order investigations, prosecutions, etc. of virtually every single Bush appointee, knowing full well that they are all criminals. Or, he can do as they did in S. Africa, and appoint a reconciliation commission to determine the facts, expose them to the light of day, then pardon the whole lot. I'm betting on a version of the latter.
May 6, 2008 4:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
then pardon the whole lot.
It will be too late then.
Bush is pardoning everyone, (including himself) on January 19, 1009.
Rendering moot all further proceedings, and cutting off any further investigation under the criminal liability side.
He will also issue prospective pardons for any contempt of congress liabilty for failure to comply with a congressional subpoena.
Case, as we say, closed.
May 6, 2008 7:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Justice would be nice, but as long as the damage can be repaired and we can begin to rebuild America and take it in the right direction, I can live with that kind of reconciliation.
May 6, 2008 10:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
How is it our Military Academies, and the Services the graduates migrate to, create such poor Generals as Franks, Abizaid, Sanchez, Casey, and Petreaus? These Generals, and I use the word loosely, seem to parallel Westmoreland and the Vietnam experience.
Tell the Administration, Congress and the media what it wants to hear, say every battle or skirmish is a victory, that we are gaining the hearts and minds of the populace. The truth and personal honor be damned.
I wonder why the report is suppressed.
May 6, 2008 5:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
After the fall of the Soviet Union there was a tremendous drawdown of the military. There were so many officers that had to be let go, and so few resources to do a thorough job, that any blot, the merest deviation from perfect, on an officer's file would be enough to put them in the reject pile. The military became a zero-defect organization -- one mistake would be the kiss of death to a career.
The officers very soon realized this, and therefore risk-taking, trying something new & different, bucking the system, all became serious no-no's. To foster their careers, all officers became sycophants, never questioning, following everything even whispered to them by their superiors.
Hence, the entire culture of the officer corps went from encouraging initiative and thinking outside the box to a culture of conforming, no-initiative, sycophancy. Don't rock the boat. Don't ask questions. Do what you're told.
So the generals obeyed without question. The colonels obeyed without question. The majors, captains and lietenants obeyed unquestioningly. Everyone fell in line.
Little Georgie, The Big Dick, and Dumsfeld all took advantage of this, and instead of fixing the military they took advantage of its disfunction and misused and abused it. Now the military is nearly broken.
It will take at least a decade to fix this mess.
ITMFA
May 7, 2008 10:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just gotta LOVE American "democracy"!
May 6, 2008 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is apparent that what they eat for breakfast is classified.
This is the most appalling administration in my lifetime if not American history.
http://livefrankly.wordpress.com
May 6, 2008 10:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
At the risk of being redundant - "So it demands further investigation by Congress to get to the bottom of it."
Like the irregularities, abuses, and deceptions of the 2000 election?
Like a real 9/11 investigation, (not the 9/11 whitewash, and the hollow and moot partisan parables "message-force mulitipliers" on the payroll of the Bush government brute and proselytize?
Like investigating the deception and OSP conjured fictions, myths, exaggerations, hyped, singlesourced, unvetted, dodgey, stovepiped, cherry picked babel and patent lies bruted, by "message-force mulitipliers", and repeated relentless and incessently by the complicit parrots in the socalled MSM justifying the Bush governments bloody, costly, noendinsight, horrorshow and excuse for wanton profiteering in Iraq.
Like azmodeous, - I mean cheney's secret covens, - I mean klans, - I mean cabals, - I mean energy commission formulating our energy policy?
Like the tens of billions of the peoples unaccounted for dollars simply missing from the wayward misadventures in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the prosecution of the socalled neverendingwaronterror.
Like the wanton profiteering and the engoring of offshore offsheet accounts by cronies, cabals, klans, and olirgachs in the Private Military, Private Intelligence, and Private PR industrial complexes' beholden to, shielded by, and awarded nobid, openended, multi hundred million dollar contracts without the peoples review, recourse, or remedy for abuse, and sans the acounting by the fascists in the Bush government?
Like the NSA spying programs, and Orwellian TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESSS, now total terrorist awareness data mining, programs conducted on AMERICANS?
Like the torture policies we all know were conjured and ordered from the highest offices of the Bush government, including the VP, the SECDEF, and dear leader?
The cover-ups of all these abuses, deceptions, financial malfeasance?
Like the treasons and treachering in the outing of Valerie Plame and Brewster Jennings, & Associates by asmodeous, - I mean cheney's fascists covens, - I mean cabals - I mean klans - I mean officers and assistants.
Like the suppression of science and denying of global warming?
Like the horrorshow Continuity of Govermnent marshal law presidential directives by dear leader that could suspend the election, and declare total dictatorial authorities, should there be another PearHarborlikeevent, or the sequel to 9/11?
I could go on and fill pages with a festering litany of crimes and radical abuses, perversions, betrayals, and treasons that "demands further investigation by Congress to get to the bottom of it."
When will these investigations start?
Why have we not demanded these investigations already?
Why do the American people allow the fascists in the Bush government to mangle, dismember, pervert, betray, and reengineer the Constitution and our democracy?
Why do we allow the fascists in the Bush government to operate above, beyond, outside, and in total disdain of the rule of law?
Why do the American people tolerate of government that has shamed, betrayed, bankrupted, discredited, perverted, and shapeshifted our once more perfect union into what can accurately be described (with mountains of supporting evidences) as the great satan.
"Deliver us from evil!"
May 6, 2008 11:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
> At the risk of being redundant - "So it demands further investigation by Congress to get to the bottom of it."
...- pagin' Jeff Gannon...
May 7, 2008 12:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, the South African example was more complex--people were pardoned if they proved their crimes were committed for political reasons only. If we applied the same standards to the Bush administration, there'd still be a slew of prosecutions for corruption and profiteering.
May 7, 2008 4:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
They, and you know who they are, need a bit of vigilante justice. When the police and proper authorities refuse to do anything, it's time for people to take justice into their own hands. One can certainly imagine several situations/scenarios in which the authorities have lost legitimacy, situations in which it becomes not only permissible but responsible to take matters into our own hands. A week ago one of the conspirators who planned to kill Hitler with a bomb died of old age. Is he a hero or a traitor? I'd say hero because Hitler's regime had no, or lost, its legitimacy. Track them down and introduce them to their maker.
May 7, 2008 4:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've had a terrible nightmare.
Obama becomes the Dem candidate, and Bush intentionally starts a conflict with Iran to force the outcome of the election. Americans, afraid to put someone without military experience in office during a crisis, choose McCain over Obama as Commander in Chief, all other considerations be damned.
After all, look at the mess a militarily inexperienced person at the helm got us into.
May 7, 2008 4:34 PM | Reply | Permalink