Ex-top soldier: Iraq war ‘fiasco’ due to Rumsfeld’s ‘lies’

[justabubba]

posting this here only because of this directive:

... there will be no "wiggle room" in terms of ME topics being discussed in any forum other than the ME Forum.

so if it needs to be properly placed elsewhere, please do so

Ex-top soldier: Iraq war ‘fiasco’ due to Rumsfeld’s ‘lies’ | Raw Story

The US had no reason to invade Iraq in 2003, and only did so because of "a series of lies" told to the American people by the Bush administration, says Gen. Hugh Shelton, who served for four years as the US's top military officer.

... "President Bush and his team got us enmeshed in Iraq based on extraordinarily poor intelligence and a series of lies purporting that we had to protect Americans from Saddam's evil empire because it posed such a threat to our national security," Shelton writes in his memoir.

According to Ricks, Shelton states that, in order to get the war going, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "elbowed aside Gen. Richard Myers and the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and also intimidated and flattered Gen. Tommy R. Franks while working directly with him, and so basically went to war without getting the advice of his top military advisors."

The result, Shelton writes, was a war plan that amounted to a "fiasco."

Shelton reportedly saves his harshest criticisms for Rumsfeld himself, who he said had "the worst style of leadership I witnessed in 38 years of service."

... "Spinning the possible possession of WMDs as a threat to the United States in the way they did is, in my opinion, tantamount to intentionally deceiving the American people," Shelton writes.

also has unflattering assessments of mccain

i expect people to question why did General Shelton did not resign his commission and go public before the loss of 4,000 American lives and the loss of untold national treasure
but i respect that he followed orders - no matter how inappropriate they were - saluted, and tried to change things for the better from his inside vantage
not sure how much is here that we did not already know, but it will make the reich wing's attempts to spin the iraq war as anything other than misguided to be a harder sell
for instance, this morning, condi rice again insisted that the war in iraq was the right thing to do ... wish someone had asked her how that position squares with the memoir of General Shelton