The Men Who Stare At Goats Senators
Friday, February 25, 2011
By now, you all have probably heard about or read this story from muckraker Michael Hastings about Lieutenant General Caldwell utilizing Psy-ops resources (personnel) in order to influence American politiicans - specifically some very key Senators.
...The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts...
Like Jack Reid and Joe Lieberman and Carl Levin are weak minded fools and LTC Holmes was going to use some kind of mind-kung-fu on them? Come on...
This whole article smells of a disgruntled Lieutenant Colonel who got caught breaking the rules (drinking alcohol, inappropriate relationship, etc.) and is now in full-on reprisal mode. Both LTC Holmes and MAJ Levine receiveds GOMORs. It looks to me like they were tasked to perform public affairs functions (perhaps due to a knwon PA manpower shortage). There is a fine line between PA and Information Operations (IO) - they essentially perform the same duties but with different targets. PA focuses on information channeled to the US sources and IO does the same at other non-US sources.
First of all, read the article so you're up to speed. Then, ask yourself a few questions:
Those of you in the military will understand this and those of you who know LTG Bill Caldwell will understand the point of this question even more:
LTC Holmes and MAJ Levine claim that they addressed their concerns with their chain of command, but did they ever exercise the open door policy with LTG Caldwell since they claim they had access to him on a regular basis?
Did LTC Holmes or MAJ Levine ever report this to the IG either in theater or even after redeploying?
Was there an IG investigation conducted and what were the results of that investigation?
If this was sooo egregious that this story had to be told in order to stop this horrific use of our resources, then whey did it take until late February for this story to come out if LTC Holmes and MAJ Levine redeployed to Fort Living Room in SEPTEMBER?!
This whole article is a piece of garbage and Michael Hastings is this century's muck raker extraordinaire. If anyone has access to the 15-6 investigation, I would love to read it. I wonder why Michael Hastings hasn't posted it along with his article? I'm probably going to drop a FOIA on it soon.
A proper investigation is in order, certainly. I would bet a lot of money that it will reveal that the man with intergrity and honor through all of this is LTG Caldwell and not LTC Holmes...
Unfortunately, this creates a significant distraction for a man who's job is relentless in pace with no acceptable outcome other than victory. We wish C3 the best!