Petraeus' defense
You know those 190,000 US supplied weapons that went missing in Iraq? Well, that happened under Petraeus' watch while he was responsible for training Iraqi forces. Here's his response,
From a practical standpoint, Petraeus added, it was more important to get the weapons to the Iraqis as they started to enter the fight against a strong insurgency than it was to keep meticulous records.
Right, because the long term impact of having 190,000 AK's and auto pistols floating around was so minor.
posted by mikevotes at
8:03 AM
4 Comments:
The flooding of third world countries with arms is a time honored American tradition of shortsightedness.
I used to by the official line about Petraeus being a different kind of military man. An educated, worldly man capable of seeing outside the box. My evolving attitude toward Petraeus is that he doesn't really see out side the box, he just makes up what's outside the box. His plans, therefore, while seeming well conceived, are more like a bottle rocket: the take off with great fanfare, only to come crashing back to Earth.
By
-epm, at 10:24 AM
My opinion is that Petraeus is really smart, but I tend to see the inetrnal army criticism that he is a self promoter and self aggrandizer.
The troop training under him didn't go so well, his "solution" in Mosul was enacted when there wasn't more than local resistance there, and wasn't sustainable.
He's smart, he's pretty good, but he's not as good as his press.
The irony is that the Bush admin lifting him up as a paragon plays right into his already present charcter flaw.
By
mikevotes, at 10:44 AM
Look at it this way. The weapons did made their way into Iraqi's hands. Just not the ones they hoped.
By
Anonymous, at 3:18 PM
And, to carry your point forward, even if they had been issued to the Iraqi forces Petraeus was training in 2004, half of those guys have defected by now anyway.
By
mikevotes, at 3:39 PM
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