I turned on my computer today and the first thing I see on the Yahoo webpage was this article from the AP claiming a senior officer in Iraq is criticizing the generals and saying the war effort cannot be won. The AP article includes a few choice quotes from the officer, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling and the AP writer tries to link these quotes to the generals that made media headlines last year before the Congressional elections.

LTC Paul Yingling

Once I read this link I knew this article was pure spin because the generals that spoke out last year did not speak out against the war, they spoke out because they wanted the removal of then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for his incompetence in managing the war. Those generals did not speak out saying the war was lost and since Rumsfeld was removed soon after their criticism, you hear nothing from these generals any more in the media because they no longer fit the talking points the media is looking for.

Additionally the AP writer even tries to link LTC Yingling to the Appeal for Redress website and its founder Jonathan Hutto.

But public criticism from an active duty officer is rare and may be a sign of growing discontent among military leaders at a critical time in the troubled U.S. military mission here.

An anti-war group, Appeal for Redress, says about 2,000 active duty personnel and veterans have signed a petition calling for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

One of its founders, Navy Petty Officer Jonathan Hutto, has said 60 percent of the members have served in Iraq. There are about 1.4 million active-duty personnel in the U.S. military.

Many of you reading this may remember Hutto and others in the military are in fact Amnesty International plants in the military (see here and here) that is backed by the largest liberal public relations firm in America and filled with money from liberal activist groups including those backed with George Soros money. What is kind of interesting is that Hutto’s claims of over 2,000 people signing his petition is untrue. Click here to look at the Appeal for Redress site and you can see for yourself that of this writing there is only 1,890 signatures on Hutto’s petition. Additionally no mention is made that the Appeal for Courage site, which is a real grassroots effort formed in response to Hutto’s site, currently has 2,608 signatures, hundreds more than Redress. Redress was launched last October before the mid-term elections and due to Fenton Communications it has been featured in the past few months in hundreds of newspapers, a CBS News 60 Minutes special, and backed by Yahoo to name a few prominent media supporters. Despite all of this, Appeal for Courage overtook Redress in just 37 days with very little media publicity when it was launched this past February.

You would think an AP writer would fact check something like this before publishing it, but the AP is not about publishing facts but, like I pointed out before, creating perceptions. The AP, in coordination with the other liberal activist groups and media outlets, are trying to create a perception of a growing anti-war sentiment in the US military which is not true. After reading the Appeal for Redress crap in the AP article I was even more convinced of the bias of the AP writer because from what I know of LTC Yingling, I would be surprised if he had anything to do with the Appeal for Redress crowd.

Additionally what I’m seeing from the media is that they are claiming that LTC Yingling is condemning the current Iraq strategy. For example take a look at this headline from the BBC for example, US Officer Condemns Iraq Strategy. These types of headlines are trying to link Yingling’s article to General Petraeus and the debate over the current Iraq strategy, but there is only one problem, Yingling’s article has nothing to do with criticizing the current Iraq strategy and if anything is supportive of General Petraeus and his current counterinsurgency policy. I have not seen one article mention that yet.

So what did LTC Yingling have to say in his article exactly then. You can read the whole article for yourself here, but his criticism is on how the army conducted the war beginning in 2003, not now. His main thesis is that the generals running the military in the lead up to and the initial conduct of the war did not have the moral courage to tell the civilian leadership in Washington how many troops were necessary to occupy Iraq.

Yingling does mention this in his article, but one general did stand up and tell everyone in Washington that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to pacify Iraq, and that was General Eric Shinseki. What happened to General Shinseki after telling everyone in Congress this? He was forced to retire and no one in Washington said a word. So every time I hear these spineless politicians claim they were misled in their vote to go to war I have to smirk because General Shinseki told them exactly what was needed to go to war and they all chose to ignore him. LTC Yingling says that other generals in the Pentagon should have stood up and defended Shinseki, but none did because they wanted to protect their careers. He draws analogies between generals during the build up to Vietnam not properly closing ranks and informing the civilian leadership of what was needed to wage the war there to the generals before the current Iraq War not properly closing ranks behind Shinseki.

LTC Yingling believes generals need to have greater higher education with more generals holding doctorate degrees in the humanities as well as being able to speak a foreign language. Additionally he believes that a portion of officer evaluation reports should include subordinate and peer reviews to see how respected the officer is from the people they lead. I would have to see more details on how such a system would work, but does anyone think there would be a lock down on Kunsan Airbase right now, if the airmen there had a say in the evaluation reports of the leadership running the base?

Additionally, Yingling says that the military did not execute an adequate occupation plan because the military was depended on the State Department to implement the occupation plan. As we all seen including, myself who was there in Iraq during this time, the occupation plan by the State Department was incompetent to say the least. Yingling believes that the military should have been in charge of the occupation from the start because civilian agencies have proven that they are incapable of executing such missions. In response to this, the US military is doing all the military, civilian, and even much of the diplomatic work to stabilize Iraq now.

Finally, LTC Yingling criticizes the lack of counterinsurgency training given to the military before the invasion of Iraq. Once again this is also true because from my own personal experience we received no counterinsurgency training at all. All of our pre-deployment training including our National Training Center rotation focused around offensive operations not counterinsurgency.

So basically you have a Lieutenant Colonel questioning the leadership of the generals in the lead up to the war and the initial execution of it, while additionally questioning the initial occupation plan and pre-deployment counter-insurgency training of the military. What is new about this? The only reason this is making any headlines now is because the media is trying to spin this as he is criticizing General Petraeus, which is completely false. General Petraeus is the kind of general that LTC Yingling is advocating the US military find more of. Petraeus has a masters and doctorate degrees from Princeton in International Relations and is highly respected by his subordinates and peers everywhere he goes. Not in one media article about LTC Yingling’s editorial has anyone mentioned that Petraeus fits the mold of general that Yingling is advocating.

Additionally what else is overlooked is that Yingling’s former boss Colonel H.R. McMaster was the commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment while LTC Yingling was his executive officer. Why is this important? Because COL McMaster wrote a book, Dereliction of Duty, that parallels what Yingling is discussing because the book is about how the generals during Vietnam failed the military then that Yingling is drawing much of his criticism of present day generals from now. Additionally what isn’t mentioned is that COL McMaster is one of General Petraeus’ right hand men in Iraq and the type of officer that fits LTC Yingling’s profile of an ideal senior officer. COL McMaster is another senior officer who has a doctorate from North Carolina University that is highly respected by his men. In fact COL McMaster is just one of many of the warrior-scholars that were hand picked by General Petraeus to lead the new counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq.

No where in the article does LTC Yingling advocate that the war is lost and if anything his entire article backs up the current change in strategy being launched in Iraq. Additionally no where in the article is he condemning the generals now in Iraq. In fact more of the warrior-scholars that Yingling advocates are running operations in Iraq now along with more troops trained in counter-insurgency who are executing an occupation plan being implemented by the military not the State Department. The article is dated and many of the recommendations that LTC Yinyling advocates has already been implemented.

However, these facts I have pointed out, run contrary to the perceptions the media is trying to create and thus are not mentioned at all in the media. Our media is in a very sad state and this is just the latest in a long series of incidents of the media politicizing the military. I highly encourage everyone read LTC Yingling’s article and see for yourself he is not anti-Petraeus and does not think the war is lost. If anything after reading his article I am more optimistic that the military is heading in the right direction. The only ones with pessimism after reading his piece are those in the media and America’s left. Is anyone surprised?