Psychological Warfare – or – how aWol got Lute-Fisked

I should probably keep this to myself and enjoy the yucks in private – but I just can’t – you all need to know what a thumb in the eye Doug Lute is to George Bush.

But think about these points, in no specific order.

Lute is an active duty flag-rank. This intimidates the fuck out of the aWol one. He punked out, every officer and active duty NCO in a leadership position knows it, and aWol himself knows it too. A real live put-up-or-shut-up general intimidates the fuck out of him. I laugh my ass off at Lute briefing aWol on a daily basis – and dude – you do too, if you so much as sat through Platoon and Full Metal Jacket in one setting. Oh, to be a fly on that wall…

Thing is, I know a lot of O-3 to O-6’s – and trust me…a lot of them would attempt to arrest the fucker on charges of being…AWOL. He is not popular amongst those doing the fighting and the dying.

Robert Gates doesn’t just know this, he is banking on it.

Gates is not aWol’s man – he is his father’s man. He was reluctantly accepted in the wake of the dissing of the ISG – of which Gates was a part. aWol does not want to deal with Gates. Gates is a living breathing reminder of his abject failures.

Douglas Lute had his turn before the Senate on Thursday, and he didn’t seem to have any aversion at all to truth-telling and sobering assessments. He told senators during his hearing before the Armed Services Committee that he believed there was no purely military or America-only solution possible.

Not words that the punk president would care to hear.

And he is going to hear them every single day for the rest of his term.

A “War Czar” has been chosen

The White House today announced the appointment of Lt. General Douglas Lute to the position of Director of Operations for the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lt. General Lute was a featured speaker at a breakfast hosted by the Association of the United States Army Institute of Land Warfare breakfast earlier in the week. Some of the things he said make way too much sense for a Bush appointment.

You be the judge. (From the AUSA Website)

AUSA Hosts Several key Committee Staffers

AUSA hosted several key congressional staff members at the Institute of Land Warfare breakfast this week. Addressing the group was LTG Douglas Lute, the director for operations, J-3, for the Joint Staff.

LTG Lute described the U.S. military and the global war on terror by saying, “We have a hammer but the problem is not a series of nails.” He also said that al Qaeda fights by using loosely connected cells around the world and educating its followers on the internet to achieve its goal of reestablishing the Caliphate—a geographic area under Muslim rule and governed by Islamic law.
The enemy has found a safe haven on the internet, which, according to Lute, they use “better than we do.” Instructions can be found on the internet o n how to build bomb vests and how to cross Syria into Iraq. All these things can be found “on the internet today. It is the greatest safe haven they use against us.”

Some of the lessons learned, Lute explained are that joint warfighting is one of the keys to winning. Fighting with allies and local people and understanding their culture and language are powerful weapons. In addition, firepower and maneuver are not as important as timing and precision. “We have the world’s best Army,” Lute explained, “but we don’t have ‘find and fix.’” The enemy, he said, has excellent intelligence gathering while the United States relies on intelligence almost solely from prisoners.

The war on terror, Lute warned, could last fifteen to sixteen years. Nor would it be a decisive victory. “We’re not going to see the win in the newspapers, there will be no V-J (Japan) Day.” Instead, he explain ed, the ideology we fight can be suppressed but not eradicated. Also, the military alone cannot deliver victory and, in the end, countries around the world will not offer us gratitude, but respect.

I am not of the opinion that adding another level to the metric will change anything or salvage the unsalvageable, but I am at least not mortified by their choice, which is frankly far and away better than I expected. He sure is saying the right things.

For the record, I will never be a fan of Bob Gates, but I think I see his fingerprints on this choice, and if so, he’s making it hard to maintain the level of loathing for him that I have had for at least 20 freakin’ years.

Also, it does not escape my notice that this transpired while Dick "use the Military to open a soda" Cheney was out of the country.

[Cross-posted from the blog you should be reading, Watching Those We Chose]

Wanted: One War Czar

Desperate to salvage some semblance of his legacy and reputation, George Bush's latest grand scheme involves appointing a Grand Poobah War Czar to oversee operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and coordinate efforts between the State and Defense departments with the military.

Only problem is, nobody wants the billet.

"The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going," said retired Marine Gen. John J. "Jack" Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job. Sheehan said he believes that Vice President Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq. "So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks,' " he said.

The White House has not publicly disclosed its interest in creating the position, hoping to find someone President Bush can anoint and announce for the post all at once. Officials said they are still considering options for how to reorganize the White House's management of the two conflicts. If they cannot find a person suited for the sort of specially empowered office they envision, they said, they may have to retain the current structure.

When I say nobody wants the billet, I mean nobody. Not even Keane, and the Splurge was his idea. (Dave Petraeus has been charged with implementing it, but it is not his idea. He advocated an entirely different strategy in his thesis.)

Should they find a patsy someone to take the job, the new czar would report directly to Bush and (DCI) Steven Hadley, and would have the title of assistant to the president, just as Hadley and the other highest-ranking White House officials have. The new czar would also have "tasking authority," or the power to issue directions, over other agencies, they said.

General Sheehan offered up his exact reason for declining the job: Dick Cheney.

"There's the residue of the Cheney view -- 'We're going to win, al-Qaeda's there' -- that justifies anything we did," he said. "And then there's the pragmatist view -- how the hell do we get out of Dodge and survive? Unfortunately, the people with the former view are still in the positions of most influence." Sheehan said he wrote a note March 27 declining interest.

Enough already...

It's time to

ITMFA!!!