From a reader:
Jonah,
McCaffrey is a serious, thoughtful guy, but I’ve noticed over the last 18 months, both thru the Afghan campaign and during the lead-in to the Iraq conflict, he has a tendency to downplay/nitpick any military success that makes Gulf War I (and Schwartzkopf’s (sp?) and his own “heroic success” in how it was carried out) look less than the total success that it was protrayed as at the time by comparison to current operations.
Yeah, he’s got legit concerns (lots of “traditional” military types – especially Army/Marine types – have been saying similar or more critical things about the plan for months and months now), but he’s also in the business of McCaffrey Reputation Protection [tm] so I always take anything he or Stormin’ Norman say about the job that the current military leadership is doing with a grain of salt or four.