WB: Department of the Bleedin’ Obvious

July 24, 2006

Billmon:

I could go on and on, but really, what’s the point? Only that Ricks is as responsible as anyone for leading the American people (and the military itself) to believe the war was being won — quickly and decisively. That being the case, why should the generals have bothered to remember the lessons of Vietnam?

Department of the Bleedin’ Obvious

Posted by b on July 24, 2006 at 05:48 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Another long Rick piece with the same direction: ‘It Looked Weird and Felt Wrong’

From its first days in Iraq in April 2003, the Army’s 4th Infantry Division made an impression on soldiers from other units — the wrong one.
“We slowly drove past 4th Infantry guys looking mean and ugly,” recalled Sgt. Kayla Williams, then a military intelligence specialist in the 101st Airborne. “They stood on top of their trucks, their weapons pointed directly at civilians. . . . What could these locals possibly have done? Why was this intimidation necessary? No one explained anything, but it looked weird and felt wrong.”
…
Lt. Col. David Poirier, who commanded a military police battalion attached to the 4th Infantry Division and was based in Tikrit from June 2003 to March 2004, said the division’s approach was indiscriminate. “With the brigade and battalion commanders, it became a philosophy: ‘Round up all the military-age males, because we don’t know who’s good or bad.’ ” Col. Alan King, a civil affairs officer working at the Coalition Provisional Authority, had a similar impression of the 4th Infantry’s approach. “Every male from 16 to 60” that the 4th Infantry could catch was detained, he said. “And when they got out, they were supporters of the insurgency.”
…
But that criticism hasn’t hurt Odierno’s subsequent career. When he returned to the United States in mid-2004, Odierno was promoted to be the military assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He recently took command over III Corps at Fort Hood, Tex., and is scheduled at the end of this year to return to Iraq to become the No. 2 U.S. commander there, overseeing the day-to-day operations of U.S. forces.

Posted by: b | Jul 24 2006 7:46 utc | 1

Billmon’s post is spot on but there is no doubt that Ricks feels genuinely aggreived. But why?
Well early on in his career he learned that the quickest way to the top in the journalism gig is to faithfully reprint the press-releases of those already at the top.
How was poor liddle wicksey to know that those at the top were just as lazy and self-serving as he was?

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 24 2006 21:16 utc | 2

Well B or Debs.
Either of you got pieces of two Pulitzers?
I think not.
Now Bill’s been off on a high lonesome after Ricks, but I think he’s over it, and I am tired of the subject.
If anyone else desires, I’m ready to have at it big time. And I don’t really give a flying fuck.
Want your war correspondents to walk on water?
Why don’t you figure out how to freeze over the Tigris and Euphrates in August.

Posted by: Ms. Manners | Jul 25 2006 0:36 utc | 3

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