Well that ought to make for some fun summer reading!
Just from the brief description from the end of the second article, the study findings seem to support the problems encountered by Mattis on his second deployment, where he kept asking about what his objectives were supposed to be, what they wanted him to do.
I know a bunch of the historians out at Leavenworth, and they are a pretty strong group, so I'm expecting this first "official" cut on the history to be pretty good.
Summer and Fall Reading...
Jill,Originally Posted by Sargent
103 MB and 720 pages. I was thinking I'd give it a quick read this morning prior to actually down-loading the document...
Holy moly. I guess I'll go to Kinkos for a hard copy.
But as you said and I'll echo, this should be an honest assessment and be about as on point as any "recent history" can possbily be. We'll see.
Dave
With COL Tim Reese as head of the team, I am confident it will be. I was not pleased with some aspects of the first On Point. There was some political cheerleading going on up front that bothered me and the description of Op Support Hope was pablum. Overall I found the narrative very choppy.
These studies are hard to do and harder to get released. Everyone with a chihuahua thinks he has a dog in the fight. When we wrote Certain Victory, its release was delayed by 6 months because the "good ideas" just kept coming. That leaves a writer or a writing team challenged to work in such ideas when they were never part of the intended narrative.
It is good to note, they are getting around to OEF. "Bout time!
Tom
Surf's Up
720 pages, 103 mb. Been surfing several sites concerning CAC's new study. As it has just been posted and is such a large document I've found it interesting that there are so may definitive opinions on what the study says.
It seems assumption trumps reading and digesting...
Not sure on assumption regarding reading
A routine aspect of releasing a document such as On Point II, is the pre-release to folks who are likely to opine on the document. Given that first to "print" is important its often sent early, with caveat, that they can't publish critiques until official release. Its better that way than to have them guess what is written. I "assume" that happened in this case, but cannot confirm.
Hacksaw
Say hello to my 2 x 4
I've been downloading it all morning. 39% complete with 3 hours left.
Example is better than precept.
Jim Lehrer News Hour Report
the Jim Lehrer News Hour on PBS did a short story on the study last night and interview one of the book's authors Dr Wright along with Gen McCaffrey and Doug Macgreggor. Here is the trasncript to the show.
I downloaded it this weekend and read the intro, conclusion, and chapter 3 on the rise of the insurgency.
From Doug Macgregor's interview
So the starts the scramble to be the man who saved Iraq?There is this myth that Petraeus invented something entirely new and changed everything. The truth is that our forces adapted fairly early at the lowest levels to new circumstances. This book makes that very clear, and I think that's a good thing, because our forces at lower levels are adaptive, much more than they get credit for being.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
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