Afghanistan: Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[idd]

"In late 2002, the Defense Department’s office of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (solic) asked retired Army Colonel Hy Rothstein, a leading military expert in unconventional warfare, to examine the planning and execution of the war in Afghanistan, with an understanding that he would focus on Special Forces. As part of his research, Rothstein travelled to Afghanistan and interviewed many senior military officers, in both Special Forces and regular units. He also talked to dozens of junior Special Forces officers and enlisted men who fought there. His report was a devastating critique of the Administration’s strategy."

"The Other War" by Seymour M. Hersh
Why Bush’s Afghanistan problem won’t go away.
Issue of 2004-04-12

 

[Swamprabbit]

I didn't read the linked document but I get a deja vu feeling with these things. It seems like there are two basic people in the world, those who make decisions and those who don't but criticize those who do. History will be the best judge of how everything turns out.

 

[7.62FullMetalJacket]

Great source. Seymour Hersh. Now he is really "non-partisan" No axe to grind there.

 

[idd]

Swamprabbit:

I didn't read the linked document ...

Hey, don't strain yourself.

Great source. Seymour Hersh. ...

Hersh is a US Army veteran, distinguished investigative report, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Sy Rothstein is senior lecturer in defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California. He served more than twenty years in the Army Special Forces, including three years as the director of plans and exercises for the Joint Special Operations Command, at Fort Bragg, before retiring, in 1999.

But instead of engaging any of the substance of the article, 7.62FMJ attacks the messenger.

 

[ThreadKiller]

Everybody's entitled to their opinion.

Still votin' for Bush.

Tim

 

[R.H. Lee]

MOTS (More Of The Same)

The left, devoid of ideas, and filled with rabid hate, still desperately seeking traction, engaging in woulda shoulda coulda sniping.

 

[7.62FullMetalJacket]

7.62FMJ attacks the messenger.

And you are attacking the attacker of the messenger. Am I attacking the attacker of the attacker of the messenger

Still votin' for Bush.

There is some sound advice. Simple and even I can understand it.

Unlike some people I work for a living. Some people apparently have time to sit and read all this gibberish.

 

[DonP]

Tim you just don't get it

"Everybody's entitled to their opinion.

Still votin' for Bush.

Tim"


You have to hate something.

If you can't hate Bush ...

hate Ashcorft or Karl Rove

or how about Iraq? Or in this case how the war is being waged in Afghanistan.

Hate something connected with the administration dammit! So much that you'll vote Dem, or at least stay home in disgust over something John Ashcorft did.

You have to accept and believe all the sundry and various fringe "authorities" that suddenly emerge from the undergrowth to give us their opinions on what's wrong with this or that.

But under no circumstances are you to ask what Kerry or Kucinich or whoever the opposing party is running will do instead. Maybe Kerry will put his guy in as Chairman of the Joint Chief's of Staff and there will be no problems at all.

I get a very different view of what's happening over there from my kid who is a 46Quebec Sgt with a Signal unit downrange than I do from the US media and retired experts that speak to groups for a fee.

 

[Thumper]

The Sheep will always resent the Wolves to some degree.

Doesn't make it any less sad to have to watch, though.

 

[Jeff White]

idd,
Tim McVeigh was a US Army veteran, but that doesn't mean we're proud of the fact he served. Seymour Hersh has zero credibility when writing on anything regarding the US military after his stellar reporting on Operation Tailwind. It doesn't matter if there is any truth in his article, it's tainted because he wrote it. He went out of his way to lie to further an agenda with Tailhook. The fact that a supposedly respectable rublication like the New Yorker would publish him after Tailwind says more about the lack of honor in the press then it does about Hersh's credibility.

Seymour Hersh is not fit to clean the porta potties used by the Special Forces soldiers he wrote about.

Now concerning Afghanistan, what do you suggest? I'm dying to know what you would do to fix the problem.

Jeff

 

[fix]

You have to hate something.

If you insist, I choose John Kerry.

 

[Diggler]

 

[ThreadKiller]

Life's too short to hate the way these guys do Don.

We're at war. There are people around the world who despise the US, want us dead and can't be reasoned with.


President Bush not only understands the situation, but is doing something VERY decisive about it. The other side's tactics, bitchin', moanin' and incessant whining, might feel good, but they sure as hell aren't fixing anything.

Tim

 

[Swamprabbit]

Hey, don't strain yourself.

Experience tells me when not to.

 

[idd]

7.62FMJ:

And you are attacking the attacker of the messenger.

No, I didn't attack the attacker in my earlier posts. If I wanted to attack the attacker, I would post something like.....well, this right here.
----------------
7.62FMJ

Unlike some people I work for a living. Some people apparently have time to sit and read all this gibberish.

But you apparently have time to sit and post gibberish.
-----------------

Do you see? Now THAT would be attacking the attacker. While it's good for a laugh, it doesn't have anything to do with the substance of Col. Rothstein's report on the Afghan war, or how the Bush administration dealt with the bad news from one of the top experts in the field of counterinsurgency/specops warfare.

The left, devoid of ideas, and filled with rabid hate, still desperately seeking traction, engaging in woulda shoulda coulda sniping.

The Pentagon asked Colonel Hy Rothstein to conduct a study of the war in Afghanistan. He's retired and is free to speak his mind. He wrote a report that Rumsfeld didn't like. Is Col. Rothstein a leftist, devoid of ideas, filled with hate, still desperately seeking blah blah blah? Or is that just something that you tell yourself so that you don't have to even consider the possibility that your beloved fearless leader Bush the Younger has grossly mismanaged the war in Afghanistan?

The Sheep will always resent...

Forgive me, are you saying that Col. Rothstein is a sheep?

Jeff White:

Seymour Hersh has zero credibility ...

Is that right? Tell us about Hersh and Tailwind and Tailhook. I am all ears.

-----------
"I believe the Iraqi's will greet us with open arms and welcome us as liberators." -- Dick Cheney
"Liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." --Ken Adelman
"We found them. We found the weapons of mass destruction." --George W. Bush
"I did not have sex with that woman." --Bill Clinton

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

The great thing about Hersh (besides his on-the-record propensity for gullibility in trusting sources) is that as a frequent prognosticator, you can easily establish whether you think his track record at doomsaying is worth listening to in the future.

His commentary on the initial Afghanistan raids for example:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?011112fa_FACT

Disaster? Hidden casualties? Anybody recall how well some of that panned out?

Then we have his book "Darker Than We Want To Know" on John Kennedy where he makes claims concerning Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe that later turn out to be based on forged papers:
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/bookauth/shint.htm

Hersh is a so-so journalist. Anybody who publishes as much as he does is bound to occasionally hit the bullseye. If you look at just those few hits, Hersh looks like a hell of a journalist; but when you look at the stuff he misses, the predictions he makes that miss the mark and the charges he levels that later turn out to be BS, his work looks a lot worse.

Add to that a heavy reliance on unnamed sources and a record of getting burned by that same reliance repeatedly and frankly Hersh is wrong more often than he is right. Even when he is right, it can take 20 years to find out he was.

 

[R.H. Lee]

The Pentagon asked Colonel Hy Rothstein to conduct a study of the war in Afghanistan. He's retired and is free to speak his mind

Does he have a book deal yet?

......follow the money...................

 

[Waitone]

I have only limited brain capacity and therefore have to exercise discretion as to what I ripple through it. My first pass filter on any story is to assign credibility to the author. Second pass is the publication. Third pass is any sources mentioned in the article. that is why I get seriously bent out of shape on THR when an article is cut and pasted with the citation at the freakin' bottom of the article. I want to see its pedigree up front before I invest the time and neurons in reading the article.

Mr. Hersh is void of credibility. I've seen his act before and didn't believe it then and don't believe it now.

I know nothing of Mr. Rothstein so he gets a "Hmmmm. What's he got to say?" Nothing more until I get a feel for his bona fides.

Posting Mr. Hersh as a source will draw all kinds of flak from the grey-hairs populating THR.

 

[Jeff White]

idd,
In case you've forgotten, Mr. Hersh was involved with the story on Operation Tailwind that made the wild allegations that Special Forces soldiers assigned to MACV-SOG used nerve agents to attempt to kill American defectors in Vietnam. As far as I know Hersh had no involvment in the Tailhook media feeding frenzy.

The story was proven to be an out and out fabrication. Peter Arnett lost his job with CNN over it, but Mr. Hersh still manages to be published occasionally. If Seymour Hersh told me that the Army used CARC paint on it's equipment I would check to make sure it was still true, even though I have first hand knowledge that that was true when I retired from the Army.

Waitone, I didn't think I looked that grey in the pic Oleg posted awhile back.

Jeff

 

[Don Gwinn]

I don't remember the Tailwind deal, but if he was in cahoots with Peter Arnett, that doesn't help him.

I have NO doubt, however, that a retired officer could easily find a lot to criticize--legitimately--in any large operation. Does anyone think there were grayhairs complaining about Normandy? The Italian campaign? North Africa?

The point is that the strategy WORKED. It did what it was intended to do. No matter how effective it was or how few good alternatives there were, there'd still be a lot to criticize about it.

The bigger issue for me is whether we will do what it takes to continue progress in Afghanistan and not let it slip back to what it was. I'm not entirely certain Bush Co. is doing that right now, but I have to think it would be easier to get them to do it than Kerry. It'll be hard to take care of that kind of business in full retreat.

I forget--is Kerry for the Afghan invasion today, or against it?

 

[JeffS]

Hersh is an "investigative journalist" contributing to the liberal media's cause and bankrolled by the New Yorker. Hersh's actions now should be judge by his standards he sets today, not so much as years past.

 

[Jeff White]

JeffS,

Are you saying that we should judge Charles Manson by his prison conduct now, rather then his conduct in 1968?

I can't do that. Hersh has shown that he is capable of out and out lies to try to win a Pulitzer or push a political agenda. He wasn't duped into writing the Tailwind story, he did it with both eyes open and plenty of information that told the truth was available to him. The fact of the matter was that the truth was inconvenient because it didn't support the conclusion he wanted to make. So rather then report the truth, he lied. And it wasn't a harmless little white lie either. It was a vicious attack on men who bled and died so that he could be free to write his lies. Unlike other revisionist historians, he didn't even have the courtesy to wait until the men he victimized with his lies had passed on. He forced them to relive everything they went through after coming home from an unpopular war they weren't permitted to win. If there was any justice in the world Seymour Hersh would be covering high school sports for a local weekly with a circulation of 300 somewhere in rural America as the only job in journalism he could hold.

The fact that the New Yorker will employ him bring them down to his level in my eyes.

Jeff

 

[idd]

April 7th, 2004 11:23 AM, JeffWhite wrote:

He went out of his way to lie to further an agenda with Tailhook.

April 7th, 2004 04:35 PM, JeffWhite said:

As far as I know Hersh had no involvment in the Tailhook media feeding frenzy.

So what do you think of Col. Rothstein's report?

 

[HBK]

More typical left wing hogwash.

 

[MarkDido]

I think we're mixing scandals here...

Tailhook was the Navy debacle that happened at the annual Tailhook Convention in Las Vegas in the late 1980's

Interesting note. The female Navy LT helicopter driver that made the allegations, was at Tailhook and was a player until apparently, she was turned down by some studly Naval Aviator. Then it suddenly became sexual harassment