I'm rather amazed at the endless parade of people who were in a position to do something about both Iraq and Al Queda, whose actions amounted to a holding pattern, who left attack after attack unanswered.... who now think they have the answers. Or rather, that the answers others have are the wrong ones. They didn't recognize the wrong answers when they were implementing their own - now, out of the loop, they think they do?
Or maybe I'd be a litlte less cynical if these critics didn't always seem to have a book under their arm.
I don't think that's a fair charge. No one disputed that Richard Clarke had been warning about al Qaeda for years. And the 60 Minutes story on Zinni included parts of his pre-war congressional testimony in which he was saying that he thought the invasion of Iraq was a mistake.
It seems to me that the better narrative is that many people tried to do something and to make their voices heard, but were ignored or removed, and so they've written books to get their stories out. The fact that they profit from their books doesn't mean the charges are untrue, and when "an endless parade of people" comes forward, each alleging similar patterns of dogmatism and incompetence, their stories look quite credible indeed.
As much as I approve of what Zinni said overall, the faulty rifle analogy was a poor choice. Problems with the Army's primary rifle, the M-16, have persisted from Vietnam to the present. Much of this has been either ignored or hushed up. So much for free speech!
Hmm. I'm old enough to remember the brouhaha that surrounded the introduction of the M-16 into the war in Viet Nam, and its many failures (which typifies introduction of new technologies in war zones). The rifles fouled very badly, and were difficult to maintain (not good for troopers in the stress of combat). Turns out that the geniuses in Pentagon procurement changed the propellant powder in the cartidges after the rifle passed its qualifying tests, and the powder badly fouled the mechanism. It's also a relatively delicate mechanism, and requires a good deal of upkeep.
These stories made it out quickly, and even though the problem was corrected (though without the heads of the procurement branch on pikes, more's the pity), was that unpatriotic? The Army didn't want the rifle at the time, so these stories 'got around'.
Hmm. Guess the SCLM needs refitting, without right-wing input this time.