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Thread: So I Started Reading the Feith Book...

  1. #121
    Council Member Abu Buckwheat's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post

    The book is a wellspring of invaluable information intertwined with one of the most unreflective apologias ever packaged as a memoir. The people generally considered to be most responsible for American strategy--President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld--are portrayed as prescient and blameless. Colin Powell, George Tenet, the organizations each of them led, and, to a degree, the uniformed military are the culprits stabbing the administration in the back, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

    BBBBBWWWWWWAHAHAHAHAHA. How did I miss this one?

    "Maintain a scholarly or scientific frame of mind--the opposite of the ideologue to whom the facts don't matter."
    NO HE DIDN'T! He admits it ... Facts don't matter! All of you make me cry.
    Last edited by Abu Buckwheat; 04-29-2008 at 10:05 PM.
    Putting Foot to Al Qaeda Ass Since 1993

  2. #122
    Council Member bluegreencody's Avatar
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    Thumbs up Doug Feith on The Daily Show...

    Jon Stewart talks to Doug Feith about his book... Two parts-22 minutes...
    http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/in...cut-pt.-1&to=2

  3. #123
    Small Wars Journal SWJED's Avatar
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    Default Feith's Version

    Feith's Version - Washington Times op-ed by Daniel Gallington.

    ... So, I wasn't surprised when Doug asked me to "write something" about his new book, "War and Decision." While not a book review as such, here are some of my specific reactions to it:

    (1) Unlike most of the "Washington insider" books I have seen over the years, this is a very carefully written and serious historical work...

    (2) The book is extremely well-documented; so well so it will become a basic source document about the war...

    (3) Mr. Feith's development of the timeline in the decision to go to war demonstrates — probably better than any other Washington political insider story — how the U.S. national security policy "process" really works...

    (4) The more significant weaknesses of the interagency policy process in the decision to go to war in Iraq (and in the Bush administration in general), seemed to be centered at the National Security Council (NSC)...

    (5) The president's decision to go to war in Iraq is explained and defended as best it can be, though it probably was a mistake, in that if we knew then what we know now we probably would not have done it...

    (6) Mr. Feith is both candid and critical about how the immediate and near-term postwar situation was "managed" in Iraq. The book makes it clear how this set in motion most of the policies and institutions that have resulted in (at least contributed to) the chaos that has persisted in Iraq since the war. And — in this respect — there still seems plenty of blame to go around...

  4. #124
    Council Member SteveMetz's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SWJED View Post
    Feith's Version - Washington Times op-ed by Daniel Gallington.

    If by "candid and critical" the author means blaming everything on Bremer, Powell, Franks, and Tenet, then I guess it qualifies.

  5. #125
    Small Wars Journal SWJED's Avatar
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    Default War and Indecision

    War and Indecision - Book Review by Bing West, Small Wars Journal Blog.

    War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism. Douglas J. Feith.

    Hardcover: 688 pages
    Publisher: Harper (April 8, 2008)

    War and Decision, an analytical description of a dysfunctional National Security Council and disloyal senior officials, will be studied for years by journalists, historians and aspiring political appointees. Half of the book is a convincing refutation of unfair allegations about the author. The other half presents a balanced analysis of policy debates about Iraq inside the administration between mid-2001 and mid-2004. While the length of War and Decision may deter the casual reader, its hefty substance gives credence to three themes...

  6. #126
    Council Member SteveMetz's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SWJED View Post
    War and Indecision - Book Review by Bing West, Small Wars Journal Blog.

    War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism. Douglas J. Feith.

    Hardcover: 688 pages
    Publisher: Harper (April 8, 2008)
    West seems to have wholly bought Feith's description of himself as a fighter for truth and reason against nefarious liberals. People I know inside the system (who are not ideologues of either end of the spectrum) tell me that the accusations against Feith were more often true than not, and that any leaking done by CIA and State Department was more than matched by organizations like the VP's office. I, of course, don't really know, but am just reporting what I've heard.

  7. #127
    Council Member wm's Avatar
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    Default Scapegoating

    The SWC has many appropriate threads for the following. I am not sure why I chose to post it here. Anyway, here is an interesting quotation submitted for consideration.

    It is always a bad sign in an army when scapegoats are habitually sought out and brought to sacrifice for every conceivable mistake. It usually shows something very wrong in the highest command. It completely inhibits the willingness of junior commanders to take decisions, for they will always try to get chapter and verse for everything they do, finishing up more often than not with a miserable piece of casuistry instead of the decision that could spell release. The usual result is that the man who never does more than supinely pass on the opinion of his seniors is brought to the top, while the really valuable man, the man who accepts nothing ready-made but has an opinion of his own, gets put on the shelf.
    This paragraph was written as an aside in the middle of a discussion about the Axis leadership far from the scene telling Rommel to stand in tactically/operationally poor positions during his retreat across Libya in Dec 1942--Jan 43.

    Here's the bibilographic data:
    Erwin Rommel, The Rommel Papers, as translated by Paul Findlay, edited by B.H. Liddell-Hart, p382 of the DaCapo Press paperback edition.
    Vir prudens non contra ventum mingit
    The greatest educational dogma is also its greatest fallacy: the belief that what must be learned can necessarily be taught. — Sydney J. Harris

  8. #128
    Council Member Tom Odom's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
    West seems to have wholly bought Feith's description of himself as a fighter for truth and reason against nefarious liberals. People I know inside the system (who are not ideologues of either end of the spectrum) tell me that the accusations against Feith were more often true than not, and that any leaking done by CIA and State Department was more than matched by organizations like the VP's office. I, of course, don't really know, but am just reporting what I've heard.
    La meme chose pour moi, mon amis.

  9. #129
    Council Member bourbon's Avatar
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    Default Reviews:

    Fault Lines: Inside Rumsfeld's Pentagon, by Andrew J. Bacevich. Boston Review, JULY/AUGUST 2008.

    Professor Bacevich's review of Feith and Sanchez's books.


    The Return of the Neocons: Bush Hawks Aggressively Working to Rewrite Accepted Iraq War History, by James Risen. The Washington Independent, 06/19/2008.
    In a series of lengthy interviews over several weeks, Feith explicitly stated that his objective in writing his book was to start the process of altering the accepted history of the Iraq war, to adjust the Rumsfeld team’s place in history. He wants to change the narrative -- before it is too late.

    Feith sees his book as nothing less than the opening salvo in what he and many of his allies hope will be a major and prolonged campaign by Bush administration hawks to develop a new school of revisionist history of the early 21st century, in which they will be heroes, rather than the villains. They see this fight for historical dominance as the last battle of the war in Iraq.

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