New targets for the wrath from the party of Bush- twelve former Captains pen an editorial:
There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition.
America, it has been five years. It’s time to make a choice.
Prepare to have your backgrounds investigated, your service smeared and attacked, your judgement and motives questioned, and your patriotism besmirched. It is what they do, and the poor dears really can’t help themselves, and as we were told during the Frost affair, if you put yourself out there, you are “fair game.” The Confederate Yankee:
I value the writers’ service and their opinions as soldiers who have served in Iraq, but wouldn’t this editorial have meant more if the Washington Post had managed to find soldiers to write it who had actually been in in Iraq in the last year?
Only two of the 12 captains had been in Iraq as late as 2006, with the rest all departing in 2005 or before. None of them are currently on active duty.
Bob Owens has never served in Iraq.
For bonus fun, try to find the first person to make the argument that the Washington Post had to publish this editorial, because they had published good news over the past few days. If I had to bet, I would put my money on McQ at Q and O.
LITBMueller
Well, looks like they’ll have to add General Abizaid to the List of The Traitors to be Smeared:
It seems that the number of people who hate ‘Murica are speaking out at such a pace that the Keyboard Kommandos will never be able to crank out the smears fast enough!
I just hope Gen. Abizaid doesn’t drive a big SUV…
rachel
When did Confederate Yankee last serve in Iraq?
Face
I cannot take these guys seriously. First off, their Captains, not Generals, so obviously they’re not good enough militarily. I’m sure more than a couple have drug problems and a touch of teh gay, otherwise they wouldn’t be so angry.
Secondly, what the hell do they know about Iraq? They havent been there, in like, months. They’re just going to wantonly ignore the hundreds of Pony Platoons that have arrived since, like, when they left?
And anyone else notice that things only sucked while they were there, but got decidedly better when they left? Shows what kind of shitty Captains they were. Couldn’t find success in Iraq if they were at a Success Market having a Success sale on all the Successes in the store.
rachel
Say, why aren’t active duty personnel writing editorials like this? I’m sure they wouldn’t, like, get punished for it or anything.
Peter Johnson
No one has questioned the soldiers’ honor or their service here. The issue is why the Wash Post would run this piece, given that its filled with blatant inaccuracies. For example they write:
Here’s the reality:
LITBMueller
Right, Peter…now find us a quote about successfully “building sustainable institutions,” since that was the whole point of the surge in the first place: create some breathing room so the Iraqi politicians can get their shit together.
Xanthippas
No one has questioned the soldiers’ honor or their service here.
Nope; just their intelligence.
And yes, that one column by a partisan hack refutes the experience of twelve veterans of the war. You’ve swayed me.
KCinDC
Face, it’s staring you in the, uh, face: These so-called captains were actually working for the terrorists while they were in Iraq. And now they’ve followed us home to America!
Face
Hey Peter–
What rank does Patrick Ruffini (the author of that article) have? Can you please tell us how many months/years he’s served in that war zone? Thanks in advance.
Not to mention, the article was written in…wait for it…February. I thought the surge hadn’t really started until this summer. General Patreaus told me so. Are you calling him a liar, too?
Jeff
Please tell me this comment is sarcasm. I cannot tell anymore.
Zifnab
DAMN YOU SCOTT BEAUCHAMP!
Man, if only we had this sort of crackerjack reporting back in 2003, when people were screaming the letters W, M, and, D in no particular order.
And Pete, next time you quote an editorial full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, the least you could do is link us to someone who isn’t an absolute hack.
les
Hey, Peter, nice quote. Now, if we could just restrict our total war effort to Baghdad, we could be winning!!!eleventyone! The ponies are in the bag!!
sglover
Is this Peter Johnson guy actually stupid enough to believe that a townhall.com source is good for anything but unintentional comedy?!? C’mon, nobody’s that dumb.
chopper
but i thought the right never besmirched those who served. i mean, maybe they’ll compare you to a suicide bomber, but that’s nothing.
Peter:
is completely correct. the ‘surge’ is by definition temporary, as there’s no way we can keep those troop levels up longer than that. yes, extra troops can allow us to clear areas temporarily, but we aren’t able to “hold them securely” if we just have to bug out later.
this is why their other argument
makes sense. if the ‘surge’ does so well at securing places by putting extra troops in places we want to secure, and the army as it currently stands doesn’t have the numbers to make that effect any more than localized and temporary, the only reasonable way to truly secure iraq is to bring in many, many more troops (just as many military experts and generals said in the first place).
unfortunately, this puts the goopers in a bind. they want to ‘secure iraq’, but they don’t want to do what is necessary to do so because a draft would be political suicide.
Chris
How dare you question the service of the Connecticut Yanker?
He’s down in the trenches, fighting the Idea Wars.
Which means pulling comments off his blog that politely point out the inconvenient fact that he’s a passive-aggressive snitch, a whiner, a pussy and that he should buy his own damn grill.
ET
Well by Mr. Owens own definition, he is even less qualified to pontificate on Iraq …… by at least 12 times.
Punchy
Where “trenches” means basement, and “Idea Wars” means Orange Cheetos Stains.
rachel
You did see his spamming of the NRO global warming “science” article a few threads back, right? He is either that dumb, or he’s as good a troll as DougJ was back in his prime.
Ron
What do we expect Owens to say? Unlike John, he’s not cool enough to hang up his wingnut cleats and be honest with everyone and himself for a change. He runs a blog populated by morons, he has to serve up the read meat extra stupid.
Face
WOW. I wrote my 8:30 comment completely snarky…thought I was going so over-the-top as to be funny. Then I see this on ConYanks comment section:
So the right is actually trying to sell them as simply shitty Captains. Holy crap.
Zifnab
Well, yeah. They didn’t support the war, so they have clearly stepped into the political arena. And since they haven’t been sainted by the Great Republican Megaphone In The Sky, we should assume they were probably “phony soldiers” to begin with.
Ron
The moron commenter above has evidently not seen the promotion rates from Captain to Major lately.
Davebo
Worse, shitty captains who somehow failed to advance to the rank of E-5.
Pure military genius at work here folks.
tc
And right on time, from the far right of the moronosphere, Jules Crittenden, who also didn’t serve, but thinks he did because he was an embedded journalist alongside Geraldo and Ted Koppel:
“where you served probably makes a difference as well, as some critics have suggested the NYT’s seven grunt war critics who are 2007-deployed soldiers were doing combat patrols in a particularly bad area. However, along with those seven grunts and a handful of generals, this oped will be cited as evidence the military itself doesn’t think it can win.”
rachel
Just as a guess, they decided to get out while they still had life, limb, sanity and wives who hadn’t divorced them yet to go back home to.
chopper
its our generation’s Agent Orange.
The Other Steve
townhall.com and reality are so far apart, they can’t even see one another.
Jake
Fixed.
So here are the new rules:
1. When a paper publishes a critical piece by soldiers currently serving in Iraq, that paper is the bastion of Osama-lackeys.
2. When a paper publishes an op-ed by officers who are no longer serving in Iraq, that paper isn’t engaging in proper journalistic practices (as defined by HacksRUs).
Please make a note.
jcricket
It’s actually perfect wingnut circular logic, in its barest form.
If someone’s not in the military anymore, their criticisms aren’t legit because they’re not seeing the big changes afoot at this very moment in Iraq/Afghanistan (soon to be Iran too).
If someone’s in the military, they can’t criticize strategy because to do so would be treason/disobeying civilian command.
Hence, you can’t criticize the military or any Republican military strategy. Yet one more way the Repubs support the troops :-)
Note these rules do not apply if Democrats are in charge. Then, you can criticize the Commander-in-Chief in the halls of Congress, and any vets that criticize the Dems are valiant soldiers force to quit an ineffectual army or be killed by the Dems bad military strategy/planning.
Gus
If he didn’t have that damn trick knee and receding chin, Bob Owens would be over there in a minute.
jcricket
Double fixed.
(not sure how kitchen counters can be smeared, by MM and her M&M brigade will find a way to do it).
Grumpy Code Monkey
Wait a minute, are you saying he’s serious? I thought he was being deliciously spoofay in a dry sort of way.
I mean, why else would anyone quote Clown Hall, other than to mock them?
Now that’s just sad. I mean, I don’t expect the average person to understand military pay grades (I certainly didn’t until fairly recently), but dammit, would a little research and/or proofreading take so much effort?
It’s shit like this that convinces me that my public school education, which by most objective standards should fall comfortably into the “average” category, was actually towards the high end compared to most people’s.
And that scares the living crap out of me.
sparky
jcricket:
Cheetos dust. Works every time.
Pug
. . . seven grunts and a handful of generals . . .
That’s rich. Captains are now grunts? I thought they were officers.
Handful of generals? Yeah, like the commander of the Big Red One in Iraq, the commander of the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq, the former head of Central Command and the commander of all forces in Iraq. That’s quite a handful.
Dreggas
GCM,
Yeah I was reading that whole bit on:
And the first thing I thought was WTF? Last I looked E-5 was an enlisted pay grade 5 which is the rank of Sergeant and these guys were Captains AKA O-2’s. It’s one thing to be dishonest, it’s another to be dishonest and an idiot.
Ron
Captain is O-3, there’s 1st and 2nd Louies. I get what he was saying, he’s trying to say that the advancement scenario is the same in the officer corps as it is in the enlisted. The processes are so different that what’s stupid is him trying to compare them. As the link says, the jump from captain to major is about 95%. Everyone makes it. If they left after their commission, it was because they saw themselves going through the revolving door that is the sandbox repeatedly,decided it wasn’t going to change and said the heck with this.
spanielboy
I am struggling to write this, so please bear with me. What really bothers me is the ‘raising of the bar’ the psuedo-military lovers have for people to express their points of view that don’t agree with them. When was the last time Michael Goldforb, Uncle Jimbo, or Jules Chrittenden (sp?) to hold a weapon to protect us from the Islamo-fascists? So if time in country is the measuring stick, who should I believe more? Twelve captains who actually did do the job and had to live in the shit for 12+ months? Or those who like to stay home and fight the WAR OF IDEAS and don’t know what it is like to do the job day-in, day-out?
As for that person who infers these twelve folks were shitty officers and were run out of the service — take a long walk off a short plank! How dare you infer something that you have no freaking idea is going on, let alone the character of these twelve by an article they had written!!!!
Jake
Have you ever seen a cat or dog drag its ass across the floor?
I let your imagination do the rest…
Ivan Renko
What a bedwetting coward is that TIDOS Yankee.
I posted one comment– clearly ironic– saying that vet who criticized this war or any other American war obviously just joined the service to polish his resume (a la the swiftf*ckers), and the sorry, cowardly little shit banned me.
Gaaaahhhhh!!
Renko
r€nato
I’m struggling to figure out the wingnut rules for Phony Soldiers and Generals:
1) If you are a general who is criticizing the war and/or the civilian leadership which led us into Iraq, your criticisms are not valid because:
a) you have a book to sell;
b) you are trying to secure a book deal;
c) you haven’t been serving in Iraq since (fill in the blank), so obviously you have no clue how totally awesome!!!!111ONE!11! things are there now.
d) you were obviously a shitty general since the Iraqis weren’t constantly raining sweets and flowers upon our troops while you were running the show.
2) If you are a soldier who is criticizing the war and/or the civilian leadership which led us into Iraq, your criticisms are not valid because:
a) you didn’t serve in a part of Iraq where things are totally awesome!!!!111ONE!11! now
b) you served in a part of Iraq where things sucked but everywhere else, it’s totally awesome!!!!111ONE!11! now
c) you were obviously a shitty soldier since you only reached the rank of (fill in the blank) or weren’t an officer at all
d) you haven’t been over there since (fill in the blank), so obviously you have no clue how totally awesome!!!!111ONE!11! things are there now.
e) you are probably a Democrat so you are just trying to make Bush look bad
f) if none of the above applies… then you are a phony soldier! (thanks Rush!)
So… that would leave about… um…. zero troops whose criticisms might be valid to the wingnut mind.
Ignorance Accomplished!
jcricket
Yes, cheeto dust is hard to remove. I did notice you can now get 100 calorie snack packages with cheetos in them. Mmmm, 100 calories of Cheeto-like goodness. Now with no trans fat.
John – Sorry, but Cheetoos have been co-opted by the right and it’s how we identify the enemy (“You shall know them by their Cheeto stained fingers”, which I believe was Patrick Henry). Being a card-carrying leftist now means you have to give up the Cheetos (The Bible says, “When I was a wingnut, I spoke as a wingnut, ate as a wingnut, thought as a wingnut. But then I became a leftist, and I put away my wingnutty toys and Cheetos).
pharniel
jcricket wins
Bubblegum Tate
I’d put my money on Mark Noonan.
r€nato
shit, I forgot one of the most important wingnut rules:
if you waited until after you left the service to criticize the war, your criticism is not valid because you should have been criticizing it while wearing the uniform, and/or you should have resigned in protest.
Boy it’s hard keeping up with the etiquette of military criticism of the Iraq war!
Tax Analyst
You mean the “Carpet Butt-Wipe/Anal Friction for Sexual-Gratification” move?
…just in case anybody’s imagination was stuck in neutral this morning.
Dreggas
jcricket,
wasn’t the orange marking also the mark of Cain?
Tsulagi
Like seven NCOs who wrote a NYT op-ed representative of a widespread sentiment among enlisted, more than a few officers have known this is FUBAR also. Iraq is done. Has been for a few years.
From the captains…
Exactly. Waiting for peace to break out is the current strategy from on high. During Sanchez’s time the brilliant Cheney/Rummy strategy was waiting for a few “dead-enders” to die. Sanchez came up with great waiting tactics. Now we wait for peace. Stay the course, it’s worked so well. Any day now Kumbaya will become the Iraqi national anthem.
The captains hating on PowerPoint…
Yep, especially if the timing is done well.
So now with temporary extra forces we’ve locked down about three quarters of Baghdad and a few bits and pieces elsewhere. We’ve stuck our thumb in the dike. Water flowing out of the hole has gone down. PowerPoint verifies. Really smart military geniuses like online Republican strategists/analysts at townhall.com confirm the success.
But those damn party killing captains note…
Shit. Cracks and holes develop in other spots in the dike. The same pressures creating the holes are still present, but we don’t have enough buddies to go plug those other holes while we keep our thumbs stuck here. Not to worry, in time we can move over to plug those other leaks. Just leave ISF to take over plugging this hole. It’s worked so well in Basra. More known truth.
Shorter captains: Shit or get off the pot. But our Bush/Cheney Commander Team and their Malkinette cheerleaders will do neither; they’re simply having too much fun widestancing while on the pot. With the Dems content to simply peek at them around the stall door. They got your back, captains.
jcricket
“I swear officer, I just have an itchy butt, I wasn’t wiping it on your carpet as a come-on”, Senator Larry Craig.
Yes! What do I get? Do I get a Malkin-esque “investigation” into how I gamed the blogosphere to win?
jcricket
In Leviticus, after declaring both the eating of shellfish and the homo-sex as “abominations” God does go on to say something like “though shalt not use as thine paint choice the color that doth not rhymeth with anything”, Leviticus 19:84.
My only problem right now is that I’m not sure how to reconcile the use of Orange at dKos with the fact that Orange is clearly the color of the right/devil, but no matter, it’s not full-on Cheeto orange. It’s nuance, and the left understands nuance. That must be it.
Dreggas
but Kos is the great orange satan…
Perhaps the wingers are being marked without even realizing it.
Charles Bird
None of the captains served in 2007, so none have seen or experienced conditions under the current strategy. Bob Owens relayed that not insignificant fact. Why do you call that a smear, John?
Badtux
Incoming! Cheeto-stained fingers spotted at 12 o’clock high (well, 3:21pm high, anyhow, I’m sure high just on fringers). So how long until one of these guys posts about how these 12 captains are obviously just phony soldiers? And, uhm, how do they stand the stench from the wastebaskets full of semen-stained kleenex (from their incessant circle jerks) in their mommies’ basements, anyhow?!
rachel
Another non-insignificant fact is that Bob Owens never served over there at all. And how many close, personal friends and former comrades does Bob Owens have who are serving over there right now? There is a non-insignificant likelihood that all Bob Owens “knows” about current conditions in Iraq is un-informed and probably wrong.
TR
Peter Johnson has to be a spoof. No one in their right mind would say the soldiers who served in Iraq don’t know what’s going on in Iraq, but Clownhall.com does.
TR
When did Confederate Yankee last serve in Iraq?
He didn’t serve there, but he did valiant work in the Battle of the Windswept Barbeque.
Such a senseless tragedy.
whippoorwill
Don’t damage yourself attempting wingnut mindmelds nato, you’ll only kill decent brain cells and miss the point too.
In wingnuttia, there is only one rule and that is you can do anything, say anything to win. Of course that rule only applies to them and they’ve counted on liberals to play by another set of rules such as you’ve been pondering.
What makes them crazy as bedbugs on crank is the fact that liberals are now playing by the same one rule wingnuts have played by for years. Hence the increasing sound of wingnut heads exploding.
jake
Bwahaha! I’d forgotten about that. Thanks.
“Please make a donation so I can hire the kid next door to set this thing back up again. I use it to interrogate Islamojihadis. Honest.”
r€nato
I know, it’s just amusing to document all the different rationalizations. I mean, these folks have practically fetishized our troops, so it takes some pretty tricky mental gymnastics to turn around and slime them when they refuse to fit the wingnut narrative.
Charles Bird
Another non-insignificant fact is that Bob Owens never served over there at all.
So by your own logic then, rachel, the writings of Michael Yon and Michael Totten and Bill Roggio and Jeff Emanuel and Bill Ardolino are most important because they are either there right now or have been there within the last several months. John still hasn’t answered the question as to when facts became a smear.
Bruce Moomaw
Actually, CY hasn’t smeared them (yet, at least). What he IS doing is distracting us from the fact that their expressed criticisms are obviously still highly relevant during the Surge — because what they are talking about throughout that piece is the almost total lack of political unity in Iraq, which (as even Ryan Crocker agreed) has not improved significantly during the Surge, and which (as you yourself pointed out at “Obsidian Wings”, Charles) is completely adequate in itself to render any temporary decrease in casualties due to greater US troop prsence useless. Unless CY can present us with some other military eyewitnesses who can convincingly portray a major improvement in that situation, the fact that the 12 captains were there and CY wasn’t really is relevant.
rachel
Are they military?
Bruce Moomaw
Speak of the Devil: I’ve just stumbled across Rod Nordland’s blistering Sept. 14 attack on Petraeus as a long-time phony and liar at the Newsweek website (“In iraq, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure”).
A little of what Nordland says is (at least at the moment) out of date — since then, casualties apparently really have decreased, at least for now — but his main point seems as relevant as ever:
“It is striking that at the moment, in Baghdad at least, the bad guys are largely holding their fire. But can that really be credited to the surge? Possibly… Or perhaps they hope to encourage the Americans to draw back down, knowing that once they do so, all the surge gains will evaporate as quickly as peace fled Mosul in Petraeus’s wake. The whole point of the surge was to create a security environment in which the political players could peacefully settle their quarrels. But instead what has happened is a massive sectarian cleansing of neighborhoods and towns, continued and even accelerated refugee flight, and no significant progress on the political front in the last year, even during Baghdad’s Pax Petraeus. As Ambassador Ryan Crocker put it, ‘Abandoning or drastically curtailing our efforts will bring failure, and the consequences of such a failure must be clearly understood by us all. An Iraq that falls into chaos or civil war will mean massive human suffering, well beyond what has already occurred.’ The success of the surge, such as it is, hardly makes a good argument for withdrawing troops; just the opposite, it argues for even more. Petraeus’s assertion, qualified as it is, that he sees an opportunity to reduce troops to pre-surge levels by next summer is motivated more by Washington politics, and the stress on the U.S. military, than the realities on the ground in Iraq. He dare not speak the truth, because to do so would include one of two words, both forbidden in the American political liturgy: defeat and draft.”
Ron
Bird, it isn’t even worth discussing…the idea that any officer currently commissioned is going to criticize the war or the administration is utterly moronic and Bob Owens knows it. His readers, however, are too stupid evidently to know this, so Bob will keep his extra income for now.
What makes you think that your list of military fluffers is going to tell us anything the Army doesn’t want them to?
Charles Bird
Are they military?
They’re embeds, therefore not active-duty, rachel. All but Totten have been in the armed forces. And your question is relevant how, exactly?
Ron, if you think the men I listed are “fluffers”, then I suggest you’re writing from ignorance. Yon and Roggio in particular have called it as they saw it.
Ted
…