"Ex-Defense Official Assails Colleagues Over Run-Up to War"
I would say It's about time
By AcademicElephant Posted in Doug Feith | Iraq | Karen DeYoung | Tom Ricks | War | War and Decision — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Tom Ricks and Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post have obtained an early draft of Doug Feith's forthcoming War and Decision. In an amazing act of speed reading, they got through the entire 900-page manuscript in one day so they could do a preview in yesterday's paper.
Perhaps not surprisingly, they didn't like the book.
Read on...
"Didn't like" may be too kind a term. Ricks and DeYoung go after Feith with a hachet. But I think their very eagerness to get out in front of the book and discredit it as a "massive" attempt at "score-settling" is telling--it made me wonder if what we have here is a cat among the pigeons.
From Ricks and DeYoung's account, it seems War and Decision questions many cherished assumptions about the Iraq war and the role of Defense Department civilians in post-war planning. Thems who conventional wisdom has established as "good guys" come off as not so good. Convenient scapegoats, including Feith himself, now have their own side of the story and, rather inconveniently for Ricks and DeYoung, the documentation to back it up.
It will be interesting to see how books such as War and Decision re-shape public understanding of Iraq that has been, so far, largely controlled by the media. As someone who is rather skeptical of traditional reporting on the war, it seems to me that anything that causes the Washington Post this much discomfiture must be worth reading. After all, Feith had a rather more immediate viewpoint of the planning and execution of the Iraq war than even Tom Ricks.
So if you're interested in judging Feith's account in full, rather than by the excerpts selected for you by Ricks and DeYoung, War and Decision will be out in a few weeks.
Stay tuned.
« Book Review--War and Decision — Comments (2)
"Ex-Defense Official Assails Colleagues Over Run-Up to War" 10 Comments (0 topical, 10 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
All they want are bodies and scalps this just gives it to them.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Do you mean Feith's writing of his book or my post?
My apologies if I said otherwise.
The entire process of witch hunting is abhorrent. Especially in situations like this. Bad things happen. In a war really bad things happen. There is no need to create more which is the purpose of the press.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
because of the continued success of the surge. History will be rewritten.
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
Well said, point made, etc, etc, etc
What is your source for this assertion?
Neither will Condi Rice.
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"We have given you a republic if you can keep it."
at stabbing Powell, Rice, et al in the back over the Iraq war. I'll read the book, but forgive me if I view anything that Feith and Richard Perle say with scepticism. I am still a supporter of the undeclared Iraq War, but am sick of people scattering to the four winds declaring that "it wasn't my fault." Feith and Perle had a significant hand in many of the decisions that were made and backfired (Chalabi anyone?).
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Ricks had a rather more immediate viewpoint of the planning and execution of the conventional wisdom than Feith. And he means to protect it.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill