When Generals Lie

[NNN0LHI]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20070907/cm_huffpost/063464

It took 30 years, and 9/11, for Americans' confidence in the military to climb out of the pit it had fallen into during the Vietnam War. Will Gen. David Petraeus' testimony to Congress be the tipping point that sends it back toward the cellar?

We are accustomed to used car salesmen lying. We expect politicians to be Pinocchios, and the media are routinely assumed to be untrustworthy. But since 2001, the great exception to Americans' mistrust of institutions has been our confidence in U.S. military leadership. Even the debacle in Iraq hasn't shaken our trust in the brass. At the start of this year, with support for Bush confined to canines, and with an overwhelming popular demand to get out of Iraq, 84% of Americans nevertheless had a favorable view of the military, and nearly half the country said they had a very favorable view. snip

When the Pentagon comes up with its own definitions of deaths in order to dispute the body counts coming from independent observers, you know you're in the Westmoreland Zone. When a 1982 CBS News documentary -- do you remember when there used to be broadcast news documentaries? -- said that Gen. William Westmoreland had fudged U.S. intelligence estimates of Vietcong strength in order to support his political bosses' contention that the Vietnam War was being won, Westy sued CBS for libel. Then, at the trial, two of his former intelligence officers, Major Gen. Joseph McChristian and Col. Gains Hawkins, testified that Westmoreland had indeed ordered changes in Communist troop strengths reports for political reasons. Westmoreland suddenly dropped his suit, in exchange for a CBS statement that it "never intended to assert, and does not believe, that General Westmoreland was unpatriotic or disloyal in performing his duties as he saw them." CBS retracted nothing.

I have no doubt that Gen. Petraeus, like Gens. Pace, Bergner, Odierno and Sherlock, and like Gen. Westmoreland, are patriotically performing their duties as they see them. The problem is how they see them. It was the politicization of military leadership that led Americans' confidence in the military to tank so precipitously during the Vietnam War. When Gen. Petraeus testifies to Congress, his dangerous desire to please his POTUS may be all that's needed to turn Americans' revulsion at Bush's war into Americans' distrust of Bush's brass.

[Skidmore]

1. Lying like a rug...just like that one on Washington Journal now

talking about the GAO report...doesn't even bother to disguise the Republic slogans and buzzwords.

[EFerrari]

3. They're everywhere and probably will be all weekend.

It's sort of pathetic to see these men dishonor their own service in this way.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. Jack T RIpper, GEn, (R)? a liar? hah

Skid don't you see that facts are not relevant, all that matters is winning, and we are winning because we define success. And we define success as what we are doing in EYEraq, so we are winning and the surge is therefore a success. Anyone who disagrees is a terror loving, eyeslamic fascist, arab terror, terrorist group, and I am glad that we went into EYEraq because they had WMD, and everyone knew that they had WMD, and I was more surprised than any one else that that stupid, silly little irritating State Dept. Intel group (that My lord and master, His Holiness Richard Cheney destroyed), or that group of turncoat fact-based, so-called "EXPERTS" in the CIA and those silly French, and that idiotic UN, got it right and I was misled 'bout WMD.

The damned Democrat Party in 1973 destroyed our chances in VietNam, and they will do it again here.
We are moving in the right direction in IRaqNam, and anyone who disagrees, is a terrorist. So what if we had the wrong strategy when we went in?

[bigtree]

2. kick

:kick:

[ChairmanAgnostic]

5. When this guy mentioned Clinton, I swear he almost spit.

Keane represents everything wrong in today's military. Then again, Betrayus is not far behind.

[glowing]

6. What do you expect... Who is more likely in their younger years

to sign up and begin a military career? It only figures that the top brass would have more tendencies towards a neo-con agenda.... I am def. not saying all military personel are like this... because they aren't... but the one's who make it to the top have had to a few things to get there. And the Bush doesn't keep people around that he doesn't like to deal with. So, of course, they will all lie. That's what they are best at.

[spanone]

7. when generals become political enablers, we're fucked.

[madokie]

8. welp we're fucked then

[Hubert Flottz]

9. A general caught lying to congress should go to jail...

A lying general is a VERY bad apple...rotten to the corps.