Speech by Wolfowitz at West Point, 6/2/2001 (scary)

[fishnfla]

The following is excerpted from the book "Absolutely American: Four years at West Point" by David Lipsky. On June 2nd, 2001 Paul Wolfowitz spoke to the graduating class of Army officers.

He begins:

"I want to challenge you....to think this morning about two words: surprise and courage."
He looks over the crowd, measuring the response. "This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of a military disaster whose name has become synonymous with surprise-Pearl Harbor. Interestingly," Wolowitz points out,"that 'surprise attack' was preceeded by an astonishing number of unheeded warnings and missed signals. Intelligence reports warned of a 'surprise move in any direction.' Military history is full of surprises, even if few are as dramatic or as memorable as Pearl Harbor. Surprise happens so often, its surprising we're still surprised by it. Almost always there have been warning and signals that have been missed-sometimes because there were just too many warnings to pick the right one out."
He pushes back an unruly bit of hair. "Perhaps the simplest message about surprise is this one: surprise is good when the other guy can't deal with it. Let us try to never be that other guy. A century ago, on a peaceful day in 1903, with great foresight, the secretary of war told Douglas MacArthur's class, 'before you leave the Army...you will be engaged in another war. It is bound to come, and will come. Prepare your country'" Wolfowitz grips the podium with both hands, takes in the field of young officers. "Be prepared to be surprised," he says. "have courage."


MY COMMENTS: Am I reading too much into this? Why didn't he just tell the soldiers to pack their bags for Bagdad and stay off of commercial airliners? I know the PNAC nut-jobs were jonesing for a big surprise party, but cripes just how badly did they want it too happen? Whats with these "warnings and signals"?The irony is now many of these soldiers are in the middle east. The book ends a year later in real time after Afganistan, and the word on campus is :Iraq next.

Your comments are needed.

[Melinda]

1. Get the fuck OUT!!!!!!!!

But why am I surprised, these SOB's have been gloating about this for YEARS.

The HUBRIS just continues to blow my mind!!!!!! This needs to be BOOKMARKED with the PNAC files. Do you have a link?

[fishnfla]

3. No link, its on page 241 of the book

I'm kinda old fashioned. I am going to attempt to contact the author.Its a pretty good book, was a best seller for awhile. Maybe someone else will pick up on this, who is in charge of the PNAC files?

[Melinda]

4. Send a PM to Stephanie... she's co-ordinated the DU PNAC files.

I'll check out the book - thanks. :)

[fishnfla]

9. Umm, *looking at feet*

Who's Stephanie?

[htuttle]

2. Wolfowitz in particular has never been able to keep his mouth shut

He's on a lifelong quest for peer approval -- read some bios about him.

This doesn't surprise me one bit. They are arrogant SOB's, and think they are omnipotent.

[Dhalgren]

5. What gets me

is the complete lack of any need to keep their cards "close to the vest". From the begining it's been spelt out in black and white for the world to read, but no body looks at it! You rarely hear a peep about PNAC on the main news media and most folks think you are a crazy "tin-hater" if you bring it up! This "hiding in plain sight" shit is really freakin' me out!

[Wonder]

7. I guess they know

if they keep feeding the media with contradicting reports and they lay off enough people, most won't be paying close enough attention.

[Wonder]

6. A little telegraphing eh?

This is up there with Rummy's freudian slip when first interviewed just after the explosion at the pentagon. Here he our Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon, waxing all confused and thrown off balance, when he lets slip what he was doing just before the "missile" hit the pentagon.

The Pres is left to go on reading "the goat story" at an elementary. Rummy is all nelly and somewhat dazed about a missile actually suggesting that he et al. were confused about where to go and what to do next. While cheney gets immediately dragged down to the bunker. I guess he got a whiff of too much of that cordite just before he was interviewed.

[BushHasGotToGo]

8. You may be reading too much in implying there was a conspiracy.

But I'm no fan of CTs either.

[JHB]

10. Not necessarily a conspiracy...

..., just "jonesing for a surprise party" really bad.

These guys WANTED a disaster that would let them push their programs with no resistance, and having back-burnered counterterrorism, they got one.