Eric Shinseki
U.S. Army General Eric Shinseki "graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1965 with a bachelor's degree. He earned an M.A. in English literature from Duke University. He has also taken the Armor Officer Advanced Course and attended the Army Command and General Staff College and the National War College. He received two Purple Hearts and four Bronze Star Medals for his service in Vietnam. He then served for more than ten years in Europe. Shinseki was named a lieutenant general and deputy chief of staff for operations and planning in 1996. The following year, he was promoted to general, later being made commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, the allied land forces in Central Europe, and the NATO force in Bosnia. In 1998 he was named vice chief of staff of the army, and chief of staff in 1999."
"He came into office in June 1999 with a clear vision for "transformation" and talked passionately about the army's need to adjust from thinking about traditional enemies to what he called "complicators", including both terrorists and the then little-known phrase "weapons of mass destruction". Gen Shinseki might thus have relished the arrival of a Republican team equally committed to change." [1]
- "The general wanted a new kind of army, one that could combine the adaptability of light infantry and the power of heavily mechanised forces. His new bosses had other ideas. "They had pre-decided what transformation meant," said one Pentagon source. "It meant more from space, more from air and it didn't involve the army much. That was the essence of the[ir] conflict."
On August 1, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld replaced General Shinseki (who consequently retired) as Army Chief of Staff with General Peter J. Schoomaker after Shineski "questioned the cakewalk scenario, and told Congress (that February) that we would need several hundred thousand soldiers in Iraq to put an end to the violence against our troops and against each other." [2]
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz called his estimate "wildly off the mark" and said, "I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down." By July 2003, "many experts say that the worst of the chaos in Iraq could have been contained if there had been enough troops on the ground from the beginning. There's a growing consensus that something close to what Shinseki suggested might be necessary to turn the situation around." [3]
"Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required," General Shinseki told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee today. "We're talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems." [4]
- General Shinseki continued, "It takes a significant ground force presence to maintain a safe and secure environment, to ensure that people are fed, that water is disturbed, all the normal responsibilities that go along with administering a situation like this."
- General Shinseki made clear that he was providing only his personal assessment of postwar needs, and that the final decision would be made by the commander of American forces in the region, Gen. Tommy R. Franks.
Mr Rumsfeld publicly repudiated him, saying he was "far off the mark".In semi-private, the Pentagon's civilian leadership was far more scathing. A "senior administration official" told the Village Voice newspaper that Gen Shinseki's remark was "bullshit from a Clintonite enamoured of using the army for peacekeeping and not winning wars". [5]
- Then the general said it again. "It could be as high as several hundred thousand," he told another committee.
