MYERS: It is significant that in all our discussions leading up to the war on Iraq that…General Shinseki never spoke up again about the number of troops it would take.…I’m just saying that General Shinseki was forced to make that comment under pressure, pulled a number out.…Let me go back to General Shinseki for a moment. People have misplayed his comments over and over, and it’s just absolutely incorrect in context. He was forced to make — say a number. He said a number. He was inappropriately criticized I believe for speaking out.
Myers fails to accept that Shinseki’s judgment approximated the view of many military commanders at the time. As Ret. Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who led the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, said this morning on Good Morning America:
You know, there’s a process within the Department of Defense, a very deliberate planning process which goes into each contingency and deliberately analytically develops war plans. It continues year to year. Our senior leadership chose to radically modify 12 years of very deliberate planning with respect to Iraq. Previous planning identified the requirement for three times the level of forces that we committed into Iraq to take down a regime and then build the peace.
Woodward's book, Plan of Attack, supports Batiste's claim:
PAGE 40
An impatient Rumsfeld wanted the first formal presentation on the Iraq war plan from Franks thee days later on December 4 [2001] at the Pentagon. [snip] Franks began by saying that in the short period of time all he had been able to do was tinker with Op Plan 1003. He now had it trimmed down to a force level of 400,000 over 6 months, having cut 100,000 and one month from the base plan.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment