'Ugly' Questions for Gen. Myers

[Joanne98]

by Ray McGovern

Tuesday evening offered an unusual opportunity to question the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (2001-2005), Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, at an alumni club dinner. He was eager to talk about his just-published memoir, Eyes on the Horizon (and I was able to scan through a copy during the cocktail hour).

Myers's presentation, like his book, was thin gruel. After his brief talk, he seemed intent on filibustering during a meandering Q & A session. He finally called on me since no other hands were up. Some were yawning, but it was too early to simply leave.

I introduced myself as a former Army intelligence officer and CIA analyst with combined service of almost 30 years. I thanked him for his stated opposition to interrogation techniques that go beyond "our interrogation manual"; and his conviction that "the Geneva Conventions were a fundamental part of our military culture"-both viewpoints emphasized in his book.

I then noted that the recently published Senate Armed Services Committee report, "Inquiry Into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody," sowed some doubt regarding the strength of his convictions.

Why, I asked, did Gen. Myers choose to go along in Dec. 2002 when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized harsh interrogation techniques and, earlier, in Feb. 2002, when President George W. Bush himself issued an executive order arbitrarily denying Geneva protections to al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees?

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/14-2

[WhiteTara]

1. good job Ray! n/t

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. Absoluteyl. And shame on the those journalists who remonstrated with him.

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. "Lions led by donkeys" seems to have been the rule, rather than the exception, possibly,

even more in the US than the UK - although perhaps not in WWI. Even Kipling, who was said to have gone so far to the right of the Conservative party that he fell off the end, was appalled at the incompetence of our high-ranking officer class during the Boer War, and predicted, at that time, the debacle of WWI under their leadership.

There was the wholesale carnage of Omaha Beach; a certain general's untimely dash to liberate Rome; the admiral who refused to provide naval escorts for American merchant shipping off the US coast, because he wasn't taking advice from any "limey", causing immense loss of American lives, as well ships; the general in the Italian campaign in WWII, whose incompetence was actually bitterly memorialised "in situ" by a monument arranged and paid for by the US troops, to cite a few. We won't go to the American Civil War. I expect there are others, not quite so dire. Look at the scandal of the vets' hospitals during the Bush regime. It's easy enough to believe the wretched role sycophancy plays with regard to many promotions among the higher ranks.

In the credit column, I believe MacArthur is acknowledged to have been outstanding in the Pacific, and I've never read criticism of Schwarzkopf's role in Desert Storm - though there must have been others, of course.

[Recursion]

4. Lions and donkeys

Even Kipling, who was said to have gone so far to the right of the Conservative party that he fell off the end, was appalled at the incompetence of our high-ranking officer class during the Boer War, and predicted, at that time, the debacle of WWI under their leadership

There is a very good movie about that, though seeing Harry Potter and Samantha from Sex in the City on screen at once is a little creepy.

In the credit column, I believe MacArthur is acknowledged to have been outstanding in the Pacific, and I've never read criticism of Schwarzkopf's role in Desert Storm - though there must have been others, of course.

Rommel and R.E. Lee come to mind. The greatest generals seem to end up working for the worst governments, unfortunately.

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. I meant British and American. But Rommel and also Zhukov were greats.

But the Germans must have had pretty good high command, as military high commands go.

We know Stlain purged his country's officer class, presumably of some of their best commanders. Stalin, unsurprisingly, given that he was a paranoid, was jealous of Zhukov after the war, and at a celebration parade before the Russian public, had him sit astride a horse which had thrown him a few times. The horse, however was as good as gold with Zhukov. All the more reason I suppose for Stalin to have banished him (ever so politely and informally) to remote rural outpost.

A wonderful anecdote about Zhukov was related on a cable programme. It went something like this:

A couple of Russian soldiers were pretty wounded and worn out as they trudged along the road. A car with a couple of officers and room for both of them passed by, but wouldn't stop to give them a lift. When they arrived at their HQ, somehow it came to Zhukov's ears what happened, and when he questioned the men, they told him there would be a lot of other wounded foot-sloggers trudging along back there a long way behind them. Zhukov found the officers and told them to drive back to find them, get out of the car and hand it over to them. They could walk back on foot themselves.

Obviously, the story sounds a bit vague and odd the way I've told it, but if it sounds apocryphal it would be because of my memory. I tried to give the gist of it. Anyway, needless to say, Like Rommel, and Nelson before him, two others who led from the front, Zhukov was worshipped by his men. Montgomery had to order our Desert Rats to take down photos of The Desert Fox they had as a kind of pin-up! One of Rommel's tricks was to tie brooms to the back of his tanks, thereby raising a lot of dust and giving the impression of a much bigger formation.

Another outstanding naval commander was Cunningham, who was Admiral of the Mediterranean fleet. To evacuate our troops from Crete was a bit like the Charge of the Light Brigade.

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cunningham,_1st_Viscount_Cunningham_of_Hyndhope):

'Cunningham was determined, though, that the "navy must not let the army down", and when army generals feared he would lose too many ships, Cunningham famously said,

“ It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries* to build a tradition.<37> ”

The "never say die" attitude of Cunningham and the men under his command meant that of 22,000 men on Crete, 16,500 were rescued but at the loss of three cruisers, six destroyers and 15 other major warships were damaged.<37>'

* Many more centuries, in this case, since the Normans were, in fact, Vikings, who'd only settled in Normandy 150 years before their invasion of England in 1066. I'm sure that's why it's held to be the Senior Service - though clearly that honour really falls to the army grunts.

Today, the bean-counters would have computed the worth of those soldiers' lives at considerably less than one major warship, in all probability, if this Government's foot-dragging in the matter of accepting the Ghurka soldiers and their families as permanent residents, and their scandalous underfunding of the troops' equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan and their after-care back home, are any guide.