That Shinseki was subsequently proved right by events in Iraq as they unfolded in 2003-05, provided little or solace to those who lost loved ones as a direct consequence of Rumsfeld's failure to plan for the aftermath. And it certainly matters little or not at all to white wingbats who prefer to reside in a parallel universe. They still labor under the delusion that the so-called "surge" under Gen. Petreaus worked to establish U.S. military hegemony, when Petreaus was actually attempting to create conditions that would be favorable for rapid U.S. disengagement and withdrawal.

If history can teach us anything about war, aside from its inherent folly, it's that the initial clarion call to arms is a lot easier to invoke than to rescind, once all doubts are set aside and the die cast. Further, the utmost test of a military commander's qualities lies not in his ability to conquer and hold enemy territory but rather, rests in his capacities to both cope with adversity and improvise in the face of immediate setback.

That's why Gen. Oliver Smith, USMC, who (almost miraculously) managed to extricate his 1st Marine Division from its untenable position at the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War, when his entire command was being surrounded by hostile Chinese forces which outnumbered his own by a 6:1 ratio, proved himself the be a much better leader than did his superior, Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

It was MacArthur who had so recklessly and carelessly placed Smith's division in harm's way by ordering it forward to the Chinese frontier, without first ensuring that the Marines' advance had adequate support on either of their flanks. As it was, Smith's innate caution in hostile territory and wariness under the circumstances likely saved his command when the Chinese attacked with overwhelming force, because it afforded him the opportunity to repel repeated efforts by the Chinese to cut off his only line of retreat.

"Retreat, hell! We're not retreating, we're just advancing in a different direction."
- Gen. Oliver P. Smith, USMC (1893-1977), Battle of Chosin Reservoir (Dec. 1950)

While the Battle of Chosin Reservoir was a strategic victory for the Chinese, in the sense that Gen. Smith's tactical withdrawal allowed them to recover all of northeastern Korea, it was a decidedly pyrrhic one. By their own admission, the Marines had exacted a fearsome toll on their own attacking forces during that fighting retreat, with some 40% of Chinese units engaged at Chosin either being disabled significantly or destroyed outright.

Through his own capacity to improvise quickly in the face of serious adversity, and by his own personal ability to inspire his troops' confidence in his leadership and decision making, Gen. Smith turned what otherwise could have been an unmitigated military disaster, into one of the truly great epics in the hallowed annals of U.S. Marine Corps lore.

But as Gen. Smith himself offered later in life, he would've much rather preferred to have never been tested so severely like that, and it would have been far wiser for his own superiors in Korea to have avoided placing him and his Marines in such a potentially dire situation in the first place.

And any solder will tell you as well as a discount store that people complain. When you kill innocents and create an insurgency and all your friends get killed, people complain about that too.

Are you saying Mad Dog is wrong? When was the last time Henry Kissinger was an infantryman? When was the last time Henry Kissinger couldn't tell why a car would not stop as it approached him? So he had to blow a whole family away?

http://tinyurl.com/zdb9qdd

Every journalist has mocked the Washington Post for running that zero sourced article.

Even the bastion of journalism, The Rolling Stone (Yes, lol, but it is a Taibbi article) skewered the article and its content, or lack of.

The meat of the story relied on a report by unnamed analysts from a single mysterious "organization" called PropOrNot - we don't know if it's one person or, as it claims, over 30 - a "group" that seems to have been in existence for just a few months.
It was PropOrNot's report that identified what it calls "the list" of 200 offending sites. Outlets as diverse as AntiWar.com, LewRockwell.com and the Ron Paul Institute were described as either knowingly directed by Russian intelligence, or "useful idiots" who unwittingly did the bidding of foreign masters.
Forget that the Post offered no information about the "PropOrNot" group beyond that they were "a collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds."
Forget also that the group offered zero concrete evidence of coordination with Russian intelligence agencies, even offering this remarkable disclaimer about its analytic methods: