Is David Petraeus Dirty? Ted Westhusing Said So, and Then He Shot Himself.

[patrice]

64. I remember a strong & early critique of that war was "a lack of human intelligence" which means that

there was no one, other than Chalabi (and someone named 8-ball ??), from whom the administration, Bush at the time, could get useful information about actual grassroots Iraqi community leaders and this is what is responsible for our dysfunctions there.

You have to ask yourself if there were no such persons, because there just were NONE, or none who would work with us, or if there were such persons with good human intelligence & someone RAN THEM OFF in order to keep control over the situation to themselves, now WHO would do such a thing: the Pentagon? Cheney? the CIA? Others? All of these?

How do you figure such a situation out? You need someone inside of the situation, whom everyone else in the situation would have to deal with, with enough power to actually get some of the actors to DO certain things, who wouldn't become a high priority target, someone with the power to ask questions and get "answers" . . . etc. etc. etc.. Patreus.

Not knowing the short list well enough to evaluate other personnel options, I guess Patreus was about the only "choice" they had, so they had to trust him, "too bad" that turned out wrong for guys like Col. Westhusing et al.