Shinseki, The Media and The Truth

According to an article in the Sunday Chronicle, General Eric Shinseki is getting another shot at the limelight with his nomination as Secretary of Veteran Affairs, and this despite him having been wrong on every major claim he made in his opposition to the war in Iraq in 2001.

He famously took on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld when he declared in 2001 that it would take "several hundred thousand" troops to not only pacify Iraq, but to conquer it. The revisionist history that is going on now ignores his claims about the several hundred thousands troops necessary to prosecute the war, and we ended up defeating Hussein handily with a multinational force of 300,000 troops. Amazingly, Shinseki is now almost universally proclaimed as having been right, and the "proof" is the Surge of 2007 that was necessary to secure Iraq. The Surge that succeeded in defeating Al Qaeda and the Shiite militias involved only 30,000 additional troops to the 120,000 that had been in place to support post-war Iraq.

Rather than validating his claims, the actual numbers repudiate him. He was wrong by a factor of two to one in his prediction of the troops necessary to prosecute the war, and by a factor of almost four to one in his prediction of the force levels necessary to secure Iraq. Shinseki also infamously predicted one hundred thousand American casualties in the initial prosecution of the war. He was grossly wrong on that count as well.

But hey, don't take my word for it. Here's Shinseki in his own words criticizing the Rumsfeld strategy in Iraq: "Beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division Army". He apparently liked the line so much that he repeated it at his retirement. But as 12 divisions (at 15,000 troops each) totals only 180,000 soldiers, it's hard to comprehend how that squares with his comments that such a strategy would take "several hundred thousand" troops. I'm also struck by the calculated imprecision of his estimates. "Several hundred thousand"? If this guy can't be more precise, who can?

Of course, for Shinseki, his own words do exactly nothing except a) disprove his contention that the U.S. needed ten extra divisions to defeat Iraq and b) prove that he can't add.

And let's not forget Shinseki's major beef with Rumsfeld, and the source of the animus between them: the cancellation of the multi-billion dollar Crusader automated artillery system. Rumsfeld correctly dumped this effort to perpetuate a military model that revolved around ground-based artillery systems and massive infantry deployment when air launched munitions supporting smaller ground forces had already relegated such a strategy to the ash heap of military history.

Rumsfeld took on the military establishment and reshaped our military, all for the better. Shinseki's devotion to that military establishment and to outmoded technology and strategies has been proven wrong. He was dumped for all the right reasons, and efforts to rehabilitate his reputation by distorting the facts serves neither the country or our soldiers, the people Shinseki will soon - if appointed - be tasked to represent.