Rumsfeld's 'water boy,' Gen. Tommy Franks, picked for Mitt Romney's Military Advisory Council
Donald Rumsfeld's 'water boy,' Gen. Tommy Franks, picked for Mitt Romney's Military Advisory Council
byMeteor BladesFollow
Adam Weinstein has written a splendid head-knocker taking note of one of Mitt Romney's top choices for his "Military Advisory Council." It's Gen. Tommy Franks, U.S. Army, retired. No. 4 on a Foreign Policy list of worst U.S. generals that includes Benedict Arnold as No. 2.
Casting aside for the moment that the imperialist Iraq invasion should never have occurred in the first place, Gen. Franks was the guy who, in the words of Michael O'Brien, served as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "water boy." Gen. Eric Shinseki, now secretary of Veterans Affairs, had said that the invasion would require half a million troops, but Rumsfeld wanted to do it on the cheap, 150,000 at most. He turned to Franks:
Franks had only one thing going for him, and it was not the fact he was the CENTCOM Commander. It was the fact that he was a "yes man" who did whatever his boss told him to do in the face of overwhelming historical evidence the plan he was executing was bogus.
The guy who lost track of Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora thus became the guy who planned the invasion, which went really well ... until it didn't. That guy says at the top of the press release from the GOP candidate's campaign office:
Governor Romney is committed to restoring America's leadership role in the world. Instead of playing politics with our military, he will strengthen our defense posture by reversing the President’s devastating defense cuts. The fact of the matter is that we cannot afford another four years of feckless foreign policy. We need level-headed leadership which will protect our interests and defend our values with clarity and without apology.
Weinstein vivisects Franks's tenure, noting that he :
• Deliberately concealed from the American public how in 2001, at Bush White House's request, he was planning an Iraq invasion—while we were still trying to topple the Taliban and find Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
• Lost track of bin Laden at Tora Bora in late 2001, then claimed he hadn't, then was proven wrong.
• Perpetuated the bogus "weapons of mass destruction" myth about Iraq.
Ignored warnings from his CENTCOM predecessor that Iraq wouldn't be a walk in the park, and disregarded an earlier series of US war games, titled Desert Crossing, that predicted many of the difficulties of an Iraq occupation.
• Completely failed to plan for any post-conflict cleanup after the predicted fall of Saddam Hussein. "You pay attention to the day after," he reportedly told the administration, "I'll pay attention to the day of."
The choice of Franks follows a pattern with Romney. His foreign policy team is a bunch of knuckle-headed, knuckle-dragging neo-conservatives who did everything they could to make the invasion of Iraq a sure thing starting on Sept. 12, 2001.
In those gaps in Romney's schedule that keeps him off programs like "The View," he is probably memorizing advice for the foreign policy debate from Franks, John Bolton and the rest of that crew of unrepentant liars, mountebanks and incompetents. Despite the lack of details he's presented, it doesn't take much pondering to know what the candidate as president would do on Day One when it comes to international affairs.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/19/1146977/-Donald-Rumsfeld-s-water-boy-Gen-Tommy-Franks-picked-for-Mitt-Romney-s-Military-Advisory-Council
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