The Modern Lieutenant General (Retired)

Every time you turn around, almost, he is there, pontificating hawkishly. He connects Brit Hume, Ahmed Chalibi, The White House, Halliburton, and Custer Battles. He is the source and fount for much of what the Right spouts about winning the war on terror or the war in Iraq even in the face of evidence to the conrary.

Who? The Modern Lieutenant General (Retired) - Tom McInerney.

While President of Business Executives for National Security, General McInerney was the lobbyist behind the move to outsource and privatise any aspect of the military that did not involve actual combat, lobbying aggresively for private businesses to take over running the armed forces' administrative duties on both the Hill and in the White House. As such, he opened the door for the insider dealing which has led to such scandals as the Boeing procurement fiascos, Halliburton overbilling and outright theft by fraud of up to $9 billion in US and Iraqi funds by the corrupt and incompetent sytem of contracting for Iraqi reconstruction.

BENS includes amongst it's rollcall senoir boardmembers of several of the biggest defense players, including Northrop, Lockheed, Boeing and Bechtel. It also includes senior boardmembers from Verizon, Amazon.com, Brooks Associates, Goldman-Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, the Hearst Corp. and even CocaCola, Pepsi and the Morris Group. Ross Perot is a member, as is Mortimer Zuckerman of USNews and Jewish World Review.

As an adviser to the Iraqi opposition led by fraudster and spy Ahmed Chalibi, the General advocated the rush to war in Iraq, repeatedly asserting that Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction and was funding Islamic terrorism, that the US military could easily cope with multiple fronts of conflict and that the Iraqi people would greet American troops as liberators, with no hint of an insurgency. One can only speculate upon his infuence, being both Chalabi's advisor and having the ear of the Defense Dept. via BENS, or the level of his involvement in the culture of blithe spirit that led to such a complete failure to plan for the Iraqi occupation as it really is.

As a talking head on every US news outlet in existence, quoted by every right wing pundit, but especially as a military analyst for Fox News, Gen. McInerney was always among the first to announce that a "new corner" had been turned at every stage of battling the insurgency. He even co-wrote a book on how to defeat the insurgency which, amongst other flights of fancy, announced where the (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction were to be found (you guessed it - Syria). Yet his military acumen is shown by his assertion that the air war phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom was "too timid". The General wanted ground troops in earlier - which would have disasterously affected an offensive which will go down in military history as one of the fastest and with the lowest casualty count for the attacking forces.

His latest nonsense is given credence by the Washington Times today. General McInerney says that, since attacks are at a high and Marines along the Iraq/Syria border are fighting opponents who are better equipped and trained than expected, if the Islamic terrorists in Iraq can be defeated then the entire war on terror will be won and Al-Qaida will fold like a shaky house of cards, pack up their car bombs, and go home to make war no more.

"In the Muslim world and extremist world, this fight for Iraq is their key battle," said Gen. McInerney. "If they lose it, they lose the war. And so the imams are inciting young people, not particular well-educated, to head to Iraq. Most are going through Syria via Damascus.
"This is why Iraq is such a fundamental part of the global war on terrorism. When we finally defeat Muslim extremists, it will be the battle in Iraq that defeats them."

This ignores the simple fact that the good General's own best guess at the number of active fighters available to the insurgency in Iraq is 2,000 while there are more than 20,000 Al-Qaida trained militants in the Pakistani city of Karachi alone. Whole areas of the Pakistan/Afghanistan border country are still effectively under Taliban or Al Qaida rule or ruled by warlords beholden to Al Qaida for huge loans which in some cases the Pakistani Army has had to pay off in order to restore the central government's authority in the area. The General doesn't even think to mention Indonesia and Africa, both areas which the experts at Jane's Security Digest say have growing Al-Qaida fighters numbering in the thousands and where much of the funds for the terrorist's operations now comes from.

Given the General's record of strike outs, why do people continue to listen? Yet the right wing media and the right wing blogosphere are again filled with acres of words giving credence to the great military pundit, without ever looking at his record. His success comes solely from telling the Right what it wants to hear, telling it often and loudly, and never mentioning to the public the network of ties which give the lie to his being a nonpartisan commentator.

Thankfully, some are starting to notice that the Lieutenant General is very much the Modern Major General.

If any foundation on the Left ever wants to create a mirror of Horowitz's "Tracking the Network", only this time with real connections instead of wishful thinking from pundits in tinfoil hats, then General McInerney would be a good place to start.