I will always believe an American Secretary of State (even Rummy) over a Taliban Commander. Each and every time. No questions asked!
Originally Posted by bigtex
That doesn't surprise me in the least ... But here's what the current SOS believes:
"ACCURACY OF INFORMATION THROUGH OFFICIAL MILITARY CHANNELS
Senator SYMINGTON. Mr. Kerry, from your experience in Vietnam do you think it is possible for the President or Congress to get accurate and undistorted information through official military channels.
"
I had direct experience with that. Senator, I had direct experience with that and I can recall often sending in the spot reports which we made after each mission; (emphasis added) and including the GDA, gunfire damage assessments, in which we would say, maybe 15 sampans sunk or whatever it was. And I often read about my own missions in the Stars and Stripes and the very mission we had been on had been doubled in figures and tripled in figures.
"The intelligence missions themselves are based on very, very flimsy information. Several friends of mine were intelligence officers and I think you should have them comein sometime to testify. Once in Saigon I was visiting this friend of mine and he gave me a complete rundown on how the entire intelligence system should be re-set up on all of its problems, namely, that you give a young guy a certain amount of money, he goes out, sets up his own contacts under the table, gets intelligence, comes in. It is not reliable; everybody is feeding each other double intelligence, and I think that is what comes back to this country.
"I also think men in the military, sir, as do men in many other things, have a tendency to report what they want to report and see what they want to see. And this is a very serious thing because I know on several visits - Secretary Laird came to Vietnam once and they staged an entire invasion for him. When the initial force at Dang Tam, it was the 9th Infantry when it was still there - when the initial recon platoon went out and met with resistance, they changed the entire operation the night before and sent them down into the South China Seas so they would not run into resistance and the Secretary would have a chance to see how smoothly the war was going.
"I know General Wheeler came over at one point and a major in Saigon escorted him around. General Wheeler went out to the field and saw 12 pacification leaders and asked about 10 of them how things were going and they all said, "It is really going pretty badly." The 11th one said, "It couldn't be better, General. We are really doing the thing here to win the war." And the General said, "I am finally glad to find somebody who knows what he is talking about." (Laughter.)"
"This is the kind of problem that you have. I think that the intelligence which finally reaches the White House does have serious problems with it in that I think you know full well, I know certainly from my experience, I served as aide to an admiral in my last days in the Navy before I was discharged, and I have seen exactly what the response is up the echelon, the chain of command, and how things get distorted and people say to the man above him what is needed to be said, to keep everybody happy, and so I don't - I think the entire thing is distorted."
End of quoted material
As for the "Taliban Commander" I have no way at this point of assessing his crediblity ....
I have, over the years, been able to "assess" Kerry's.
Apparently, you have chosen to ignore Kerry's lack of credibility and his own "Jane Fonda" fraternization with the enemy in Paris as a commissioned officer of the United States of America.
