Shinseki And His Charges

My eye was immediately drawn to the AIG logo. Remind me again, what were they advertising? Some kind of assurance or insurance?

Make of the photo whatever, the context is not part of this issue.
The nomination of a man who’s been solidly military and who would buck the politician in charge is what’s apparent and perhaps important for the future.
When RummDick were in charge, no opposition was allowed, and now it APPEARS the persons to be heads of executive branches will be encouraged to be truthful to themselves and tell their Chief Executive what is true.
IF this administration works, and IF the executive cabinet members do their jobs well, the country can only benefit. I’m HOPING for a sea change and HOPING the democrats don’t screw it up, because we cannot afford any future Republican administrations, any time, ever, in the future.
Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Bush showed this country what they and their Party stand for, it’s not acceptable now and never should be acceptable EVER AGAIN. If and only if the Republican party were to be headed by a person of character would I ever accept what they say as the truth again.

As I remember it, Shinseki was not an advocate for or against the war. He was asked what forces would be needed for a war advocated by the President and the Secretary of Defense, to both of whom he was subordinate. His opinion was that a force on the order of three hundred thousand would be needed — not to invade the country, but to stabilize and hold a fractious region together once it had been subjugated.
So far as I know, he has never once since then gone public with an “I told you so.”

One more statement from Obama that ha wants people around him who speak the truth, not what others want to hear.
Brava.

American International Group (AIG) is one of the world’s largest insurance and financial services firms. This photo is a striking reminder that our privileged position on the planet is protected by the sacrifice of young lives, much as we’d like to believe in money, insurance, and the thrill of victory.
I’m pleased to think that those young people will be protected by an honest man.

Had so “many more thousands of young men Shinseki was advocating be utilized in a war” actually been utilized, then Iraq might not have descended into chaos, costing us, and the Iraqis, so many wasted lives.
Even Obama isn’t against war (sadly), but he is against dumb wars. Shinseki was certainly not dumb, in either sense of that word.

And how many of those eager, smiling young faces behind General Shinseki in this 2001 portrait are dead, injured, or psychologically damaged from the Iraq War?
Sad to contemplate!

Most of the soldiers are facing forward, but the Asian-Am guy is looking at General Shinseki himself. Good. It is wonderful to see a wider slice of ourselves in our leadership.

Seeing General Shinseki in front of the West Point cadets reminds me of his commitment to “Duty, Honor, Country.” McCain ran on a slogan of “Country First”; i.e., ahead of duty and honor. Bush’s own military past shows he had no particular sense of duty – during the Vietnam War, he got himself reassigned to a Guard unit that didn’t require his attendance at drills. And his sense of honor seems to have been L’etat c’est moi egotism. Bush was cheered on by bullies who never spent a day in the military themselves – people like Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Rudy Giuliani, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity.
Shinseki was honorable enough to tell the truth to Congress, although he surely knew what Rumsfeld wanted to hear. Perhaps he will come to terms with the ongoing mental struggles of today’s veterans. Having been lied to and shamefully abused, many are in a spiritual crisis as well. Suicide rates among veterans are astronomical, but the VA’s official position was, until recently, that it was no higher than that of any comparable civilian group. How many of those veterans could have been saved by mere truth-telling? Indeed, how much of America’s global reputation can be restored by a political commitment to truth-telling? Duty and Honor before Country.

Sometimes the obvious is a bit sophomoric and I apologize for the coarseness, but “Duty, Honor, Country” is what George Bush did for eight years. Dooty on our Country.

it also represents how many more thousands of young men Shinseki was advocating be utilized in a war that should never have been instigated in the first place.
This misconstrues entirely the point of Shinseki’s testimony, which was that the invasion and occupation of Iraq would require a quantity of troops that we did not have available. It was an argument against the war, which is why it got the reaction it did from Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld.