FRANKLY, HE'S A TOAD

The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of IraqThey've been around the block several times promoting their book, "Cobra II." What more could they have to say that they hadn't said already?

Still, it was worth witnessing Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor this morning at the Council on Foreign Relations if only for the frisson of hearing a former three-star Marine general describe Tommy Franks, the four-star Army general who led the invasion of Iraq, as not just "foulmouthed" and "uncouth" but, much worse for a "muddy boots" soldier, one who became "puffed up like a toad."

Those terms are not the sort usually heard within the walls of the council's august townhouse headquarters at the corner of Park Avenue and East 68th Street in Manhattan. And you're not likely to hear Trainor use them on the network news shows, either.

What else did long-retired Lt. Gen. Trainor say? Nothing as pungent as that. But he did point out, probably for the umpeenth time, that during the invasion "field commanders were dealing with reality," while Franks at Central Command and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon back in Washington "were dealing with assumptions" -- most if not all of them wrong.

Gordon, the chief military correspondent for The New York Times, was less irritated. But he made most of the essential points. One of them, the key to everything, is that three people and only three -- the Bullshitter-in-Chief, the Shooter-in-Chief and Rummy Boy (my terms, not Gordon's) -- were the critical decision-makers as to "when, why, and how" the United States went to war. The implication, left hanging of course, was that if anyone is to be held accountable, it is that triumvirate.

Rumsfeld came in for the most discussion, naturally, given that he decided the "how" of things -- particularly on the issue of insufficient troops both to quell the Iraqi insurgency before it spread and to manage the occupation. He treated troop deployment as a matter of "excess inventory" in "a kind of businessman's model" for the war, Gordon said. I didn't see anyone flinch at the remark, even though the audience was made up largely of corporate chieftains, consultants and other business types. Which may be one more measure of how low the bullshitter's regime has sunk in public opinion.

May 2, 2006 11:46 AM |

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Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
HERMAN WOUK'S LATEST 
It's hard to say which comes off worse in Herman Wouk's latest novel, his first in a decade: the U.S. Congress or the American press. "A Hole in Texas" offers the choice between two emblematic stereotypes: a red-faced opportunist who heads the House Armed Services Committee and a mustachioed investigative reporter for the Washington Post.
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This page contains a single entry by Straight Up | published on May 2, 2006 11:46 AM.

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