(Military Times) Op-Ed: Dragging a General Through the Mud

[unhappycamper]

Dragging a General Through the Mud
Joe Galloway | December 04, 2008

This week, I'm writing in defense of an old friend, retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who was dragged through the mud this week in a 5,000-word article by David Barstow in The New York Times.

Several months ago, Barstow wrote a story on a Pentagon program undertaken on orders of then-defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that offered hand-feeding and special treatment to a motley crew of television’s military talking heads.

That was a largely successful effort to get the analysts, especially retired military brass, "on the team" cheerleading for the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, and to keep them there with a mix of carrots and sticks.

The article noted that after the war got underway, McCaffrey, almost alone among the 50-plus analysts, was an unrelenting critic of Rumsfeld’s misconduct of it and his gross interference in matters of strategy and tactics that are better left to professionals.

I found it curious, then, that Barstow chose McCaffrey, who didn't feed at Rumsfeld’s trough, as the target of his allegations of conflict of interest and self-dealing, especially when he offered no proof that the general ever tailored his analysis of the war and other military matters to smooth the way into Rumsfeld's Pentagon for the defense companies for whom he was consulting.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,180467,00.html