Re: Active-duty Army officer, water-walker, blasts general officers

On Apr 27, 4:59 pm, "-HoSt-" <h...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Gene" <W...@xxxxxx> wrote in message

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"Joe S." <non...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
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QUOTE

An active-duty Army officer is publishing a blistering attack on U.S.
generals, saying they have botched the war in Iraq and misled Congress
about the situation there.
"America's generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq,"
charges Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq veteran who is deputy
commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. "The intellectual and
moral failures . . . constitute a crisis in American generals."

Yingling's comments are especially striking because his unit's
performance in securing the northwestern Iraqi city of Tall Afar was
cited by President Bush in a March 2006 speech and provided the model
for the new security plan underway in Baghdad.

He also holds a high profile for a lieutenant colonel: He attended the
Army's elite School for Advanced Military Studies and has written for
one of the Army's top professional journals, Military Review.

The article, "General Failure," is to be published today in Armed
Forces Journal and is posted athttp://www.armedforcesjournal.com. Its
appearance signals the public emergence of a split inside the military
between younger, mid-career officers and the top brass.

Many majors and lieutenant colonels have privately expressed anger and
frustration with the performance of Gen. Tommy R. Franks, Lt. Gen.
Ricardo S. Sanchez, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno and other top
commanders in the war, calling them slow to grasp the realities of the
war and overly optimistic in their assessments.

Some younger officers have stated privately that more generals should
have been taken to task for their handling of the abuses at Abu Ghraib
prison, news of which broke in 2004. The young officers also note that
the Army's elaborate "lessons learned" process does not criticize
generals and that no generals in Iraq have been replaced for poor
battlefield performance, a contrast to other U.S. wars.

Top Army officials are also worried by the number of captains and
majors choosing to leave the service. "We do have attrition in those
grade slots above our average," acting Army Secretary Pete Geren noted
in congressional testimony this week. In order to curtail the number
of captains leaving, he said, the Army is planning a $20,000 bonus for
those who agree to stay in, plus choices of where to be posted and
other incentives.

So they are going to bribe them with our tax dollars.
Great.



Until now, charges of incompetent leadership have not been made as
publicly by an Army officer as Yingling does in his article.

"After going into Iraq with too few troops and no coherent plan for
postwar stabilization, America's general officer corps did not
accurately portray the intensity of the insurgency to the American
public," he writes. "For reasons that are not yet clear, America's
general officer corps underestimated the strength of the enemy,
overestimated the capabilities of Iraq's government and security
forces and failed to provide Congress with an accurate assessment of
security conditions in Iraq."

Yingling said he decided to write the article after attending Purple
Heart and deployment ceremonies for Army soldiers. "I find it hard to
look them in the eye," he said in an interview. "Our generals are not
worthy of their soldiers."

He said he had made his superiors aware of the article but had not
sought permission to publish it. He intends to stay in the Army, he
said, noting that he is scheduled in two months to take command of a
battalion at Fort Hood, Tex.

The article has been read by about 30 of his peers, Yingling added.
"At the level of lieutenant colonel and below, it received almost
universal approval," he said.

Retired Marine Col. Jerry Durrant, now working in Iraq as a civilian
contractor, agrees that discontent is widespread. "Talk to the junior
leaders in the services and ask what they think of their senior
leadership, and many will tell you how unhappy they are," he said.

Yingling advocates overhauling the way generals are picked and calls
for more involvement by Congress. To replace today's "mild-mannered
team players," he writes, Congress should create incentives in the
promotion system to "reward adaptation and intellectual achievement."

He does not criticize officers by name; instead, the article refers
repeatedly to "America's generals." Yingling said he did this
intentionally, in order to focus not on the failings of a few people
but rather on systemic problems.

He also recommends that Congress review the performance of senior
generals as they retire and exercise its power to retire them at a
lower rank if it deems their performance inferior. The threat of such
high-profile demotions would restore accountability among top
officers, he contends. "As matters stand now, a private who loses a
rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a
war," he states.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/26/AR20070
42602230.html?nav=hcmodule

END QUOTE

Note that this guy is a graduate of the Army's School for Advanced
Military Studies. SAMS is located at Fort Leavenworth, KS, which is
the intellectual center of the Army. Approx 600 officers per year are
selected by a Department of the Army board to attend Command and
General Staff College at Leavenworth. Of these, the top 20-30 are
selected to stay an extra year for SAMS. Note also that he was a
regimental commander -- another position of which he was selected by a
Dept of Army selection board. Finally, note that his articles appear
in "Military Review" -- a scholarly journal of military studies
published at Leavenworth and required reading for Army officers. He's
what is known in the trade as a "water-walker" -- he's on track to be
a general officer, probably reaching three-star rank. In fact, his
career track is almost exactly like that of General Dave Petraeus, now
the US commander in Iraq.

He criticizes "team players" who don't have the fortitude to stand up
and denounce wrong-headed policies. Back during the Vietnam War, they
were known as "ticket punchers" -- they did what they needed to do to
get their ticket punched then move on to the next assignment enroute
to higher rank.

*** never changes -- it just keeps running downhill while the big
pieces float to the top.

Ticket punchers are what fills the ranks during peace time and screws up
the beginnngs of every war. They also are the repug vote in the military.

--
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much
liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." Thomas
Jefferson

"History is earmarked by the successes of liberals and mistakes of
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