I guess Obama will be making some news tomorrow morning on Meet the Press. He's also announcing Eric Shinseki at a press conference tomorrow, marking Pearl Harbor Day.
Shinseki is the first Asian American to be a 4-star General. He served 38 years in the Army. He grew up in Hawaii and his parents were Japanese. His parents were treated by the US government as enemy aliens (see video below).
Shinseki is famous for disagreeing with Bush on the number of troops to send to Iraq, which apparently infuriated Bush and Shinseki retired a correct man.
PBS interview on Shinseki's view of the Iraq War. The incompetent Donald Rumsfeld insulted Shinseki:
Reuters: Barack Obama has selected retired Gen. Eric Shinseki, who clashed with the Bush administration over the number of troops needed in Iraq, to be the next secretary of veterans affairs.Shinseki disagreed with Bush:
Obama's announcement was made in a television interview taped on Saturday that is to be aired in full on Sunday.
Shinseki famously clashed with the administration of President George W. Bush over how many troops would be needed in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion.
Obama was to name Shinseki for the veterans' post at a news conference on Sunday that coincides with the anniversary of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Shinseki is famous for his remarks to the U.S. Senate Armed Services committee before the war in Iraq in which he said "something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would probably be required for post-war Iraq. Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz publicly disagreed with his estimate.[2]More on Shinseki from Sourcewatch.
PBS interview on Shinseki's view of the Iraq War. The incompetent Donald Rumsfeld insulted Shinseki:
In the tensions existing between the Pentagon and the military, Shinseki seemed a particular target. Explain.Shinseki talks to David Gergen:
Shinseki's last, say, year and a half in office was a series of apparently calculated and intentional insults from the civilian leadership, especially Donald Rumsfeld. The episode that got the most public attention was when Rumsfeld announced Shinseki's successor as chief of staff, about a year and a half before his term was up. Usually this announcement is made right at the last minute to avoid turning the incumbent into a lame duck.
Three weeks before the war, Shinseki testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Describe what happened.
Shinseki has been, through his career, a real by-the-book guy. So he would not go out of his way to make public disagreements that were clearly going on inside the Pentagon. But in the hearing where Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan was sort of drawing him out on what he expected the troop levels to be, Shinseki finally said, based on his own past experience, that he thought it would be several hundred thousand troops. This became a real arcane term about, what did several hundred thousand mean? But let's say 300,000 and up. His real level, internally, had been in the 400,000 range.
Several days later, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, appeared before a different committee. [He] went out of his way essentially to slap Shinseki in the face, to say there had been some recent estimates that had been wildly off the mark -- using the term, "wildly off the mark." Then he went on to say that it was almost impossible to imagine that it would be harder, and take more troops, to occupy Iraq than it had taken to conquer them; whereas that point, that it would be harder to occupy than conquer, was in fact the central theme the Army had been advancing before the war.
Was this public rebuke surprising?
The public rebuke of Shinseki by Wolfowitz was probably the most direct public dressing-down of a military officer, a four-star general, by a civilian superior since Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur, 50 years ago. This public confrontation between Wolfowitz and Shinseki must have reflected the really deep disagreements going on within the Pentagon then, and a sign of the civilian leadership's impatience with what they viewed as the lack of cooperation from the uniformed military.
A couple of days later, Paul Wolfowitz was testifying before another congressional committee. He went out of his way, in a gesture that everyone involved recognized as being directly addressed to Shinseki, to say, "Let me address some of the ideas that have been floating around recently." He went on to say there had been suggestions of the levels of troops that might be required that were, quote, "wildly off the mark."
This was not the way that generals and Pentagon superiors talked to each other.
