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October 17, 2007-Movie Review: In The Valley of Elah
The Movie takes its name from the Bible... Plot: A father(Tommy Lee Jones) and Mother(Susan Sarandon) along with police detective(Charlize Theron)search to find out what happened to their missing son who has just returned from Iraq...
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| "Nightmare With No End In Sight"
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(AFP/Getty Images/Chip Somodevilla)
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The above comments made by General Sanchez maybe a little late or not.
The
good general Sanchez has told it like it is: Iraq is really Iraqnam; it is a mess-a flawed strategy from the beginning, no way out, only hope is to starve off defeat. Surge is a joke.
So, why has he waited so long? And, what about all those comments recorded when he was the commander in Iraq and said we were making progress?
Well, any of us who understand the military "get it." Generals are geared to tell the Commander what he wants to hear.
The present Commander in Chief, bolstered in the beginning by Rumsfeld, made those who didn't preach the party line pay the price, i. e., the good General Shinseki who was unceremoniously sacked when he said we would need "several hundred thousand soldiers" for post-war Iraq.
So, what should a General say? Well, we would like for him to be out front and brutally honest. We know they aren't and will not be; it is not that they lie, but they are soldiers overall and soldiers do what they're told. And, Generals have a "can do" mindset often when they know what they are asked to do is impossible.
There's a prominent attitude among General officers,(mostly when he or she is a Colonel) when they are in the seeking that elusive "star" which few get. These officers stifle their convictions about many things with the rationalization, that, at some point, when they make General, they will revisit all the convictions they have pushed down into their psyche.
Unfortunately, when they make the rank and get to the point when they are ready to speak out, they reach down inside themselves and the convictions have mostly evaporated. Sad. This may sound fairly ethereal, but true. Most Generals simply "go along" and all of us are the poorer for it.
Sanchez is a civilian and I respect him for speaking out even though it's a tad late. Who can disagree with what he says? Not any of us who think.
Iraq is a mess. Iraq has become Iraqnam, there is no way out. We are simply starving off defeat.
If anything, I wish Sanchez would call on more of his former General buds to also speak out. It would be nice if Sanchez and some of the his former colleagues would spell out a cogent exit strategy that Americans who care could get behind.KT
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