Gates silent on report Fallon may be replaced

[CR6]

He had a total situational awareness in both the bureaucratic and real wars he fought

I gotta get me some of that! I don't even know when my kids are sneaking cookies between meals...

Concur on GEN Galvin. I never met the man, but I am impressed both by what I've read about him and what I've read BY him.

[John T. Fishel]

I hadn't rmembered that you actually worked for a living!

[John T. Fishel]

I had the chance to work for, talk with, or at least meet all the Southcom CINCs from Dennis P. McAuliffe through Peter Pace. I was fortunate to become friends with Fred Woerner later when I was writing about Panama. I generally found them to be a relatively impressive group. Each had his strengths and his faults. Among the more intriguing from my perspective were Paul Gorman who could be a bit of a bully but was good to work with if you stood up to him; Jack Galvin who, in addition to what I said about him in previous posts, groomed officers like David Petraeus who, as Major in 1986, spent the summer break from West Point where he was teaching, in Southcom watching Galvin's approach to COIN in El Sal. Among his other talents, Galvin was a superb linguist and spoke beautiful Spanish and fluent German. Fred Woerner was a great teacher and strategist in the region but he didn't cover his bureaucratic rear. Max Thurman was a big enough man to admit that he should have paid more attention earlier to HIS post-conflict plan (which his and Worner's staff had developed). If anything, he was too hard on himself since he made it his own and executed it extremely well. George Joulwon was very insightful as was Chuck Wilhelm. As for Wes Clark, I sat next to him at a dinner for the Board Of Visitors of the School of the Americas and attempted to engage him in substantive conversation - I have NO memory of anything he said. Peter Pace has my deepest respect as I said in some posts after he was forced to retire at the end of one tour as CJCS. McCauliffe and Nutting I really didn't know and I merely shook McCaffery's hand once.

[Ken White]

I hadn't rmembered that you actually worked for a living!

that far...

I met Fred, briefly when he was CG Sixth Army, seemed like one of the better ones. Guy I have a lot of respect for knew him and worked with him and thought much as you do, he was too honest for the system. Wasn't he one of those rare former FAOs who got to GO level?

I did deal with Wesley on a couple of occasions back when he was COL and later as a BG at NTC. As good Queen Vicky said, "we are not amused." I'm sure that what he said at your dinner was noteworthy for its absence of meaningful content or even logic -- and he has apparently not improved with age; micromanaging message manipulators rarely do...


Another good friend of mine said of McCaffery "Anyone with two DSCs is either nuts or a liar."