Gen. Eaton "Cheney and Bush were Incompetent War Fighters."

[Krashkopf]

Today, National Security Network Senior Adviser Gen. Paul Eaton (Ret.), who served more than 30 years in the United States Army and from 2003-2004 oversaw the training of the Iraqi military, responded to Dick Cheney's accusations on Afghanistan from last night:

"The record is clear: Dick Cheney and the Bush administration were incompetent war fighters. They ignored Afghanistan for 7 years with a crude approach to counter-insurgency warfare best illustrated by: 1. Deny it. 2. Ignore it. 3. Bomb it. While our intelligence agencies called the region the greatest threat to America, the Bush White House under-resourced our military efforts, shifted attention to Iraq, and failed to bring to justice the masterminds of September 11.

"The only time Cheney and his cabal of foreign policy 'experts' have anything to say is when they feel compelled to protect this failed legacy. While President Obama is tasked with cleaning up the considerable mess they left behind, they continue to defend torture or rewrite a legacy of indifference on Afghanistan. Simply put, Mr. Cheney sees history throughout extremely myopic and partisan eyes.

"As one deeply invested in the Armed Forces of this country, I am grateful for the senior military commanders assigned to leading this fight and the men and women fighting on the ground. But I dismiss men like Cheney who inject partisan politics into the profound deliberations our Commander-in-Chief and commanders on the ground are having to develop a cohesive and comprehensive strategy, bringing to bear the economic and diplomatic as well as the military power, for Afghanistan -- something Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld never did.

"No human endeavor can be as profound as sending a nation's youth to war. I am very happy to see serious men and women working hard to get it right."

How do you like that . . . DICK?!

[WillFranklin]

1. BUSH/Cheney dropped the ball on Afghanistan

An increase in troops sat on desks in the Bush White House, including the vice president's, for more than eight months.

Cheney...

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. Kicked and recommended for being the truth. n/t

[SIMPLYB1980]

3. True.

K&R

[JackRiddler]

4. Would you have preferred "competent" war fighters?

Their war-fighting competence is the wrong question to raise, though it comes as no surprise from a Pentagon general.

Would it have been better if the US deployed 800,000 troops to Iraq, invaded only after bombing for months instead of days, and killed a couple of million people? Because I suspect if this had resulted in a fully pacified Iraq a few years later, this general and a certain kind of Democrat would feel there was no longer a problem.

The issue is that Bush and Cheney headed a criminal regime that planned and launched a war of aggression on a country that posed no threat and had never attacked the United States. Constructing outrageous and obvious lies while doing so, with full cooperation from the media and from approximately half of the elected Democrats (whose assent was indispensable). That this war was waged "incompetently" is strictly a secondary matter. Actually, it fulfilled at least one war goal

1) to creating vast profits for the Bush-Cheney clientele among private military contractors

as well as

2) to aid the reelection of George W. Bush

But it appears to be failing utterly on the most important goal

3) to gain permanent control over Iraqi oil profits

and the jury is still out on a third goal

4) to keep the Arab Middle East in a state of balkanization and powerlessness (classic divide and conquer).

Of course, our general isn't talking about the actual war goals, so he isn't discussing whether these were handled competently or not. Rather, he's maintaining a false pretense that wars are about winning militarily, or perhaps thinks it's an important goal to protect the troops recruited under false pretenses and exploited by the military machine.

Where was this general in 2003, by the way? Did I miss his statement against the war?

[msongs]

5. so this warmonger criticizes the previous war monger - while corpses pile up nt

[JackRiddler]

6. Yeah, I love how he was the master trainer for the new Iraqi army.

Gen. Eaton's not a warmonger, he's one of the primary war criminals of the genocide in Iraq.