Norman Schwarzkopf Dead

[beeline]

Will add more in a minute

[Col. Quisp]

Wow, they are dropping like flies. So unfair.

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That's what I thought...prelude to Poppy...still getting sources, hold on

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Link

Retired Gen. Schwarzkopf dies at 78

H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the four-star Army general who led allied forces to a stunningly quick and decisive victory over Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi military in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and who became the most celebrated U.S. military hero of his generation, died Thursday in Tampa. He was 78.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta confirmed the death in a statement. Gen. Schwarzkopf’s sister, Ruth Barenbaum, told the Associated Press he had complications from pneumonia.

Little known outside the U.S. military before Hussein’s Republican Guard invaded Kuwait in early August 1990, Gen. Schwarzkopf planned and led one of the most lopsided victories in modern military history.

Even before the rapid victory, the general was known as “Stormin’ Norman” for his sometimes volcanic temper.

The campaign, designed to expel Hussein’s forces and liberate Kuwait, commenced in January 1990 with a 43-day high-tech air assault on Iraq before a massive armored assault force launched a 100-hour ground offensive that inflicted swift and heavy losses on the Iraqis. Gen. Schwarzkopf commanded more than 540,000 U.S. troops and an allied force of more than 200,000 from 28 countries, plus hundreds of ships and thousands of aircraft, armored vehicles and tanks during the war.

Broadcast to the nation nonstop on CNN, the war gave the nation and the world its first look at a new American military strategy that used precision-guided bombs dropped from hundreds of aircraft and Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from ships. Both Gen. Schwarzkopf and his boss at the Pentagon, Army Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were Vietnam War veterans who had helped rebuild this force.

Gen. Schwarzkopf was accessible to the media throughout the war and became a familiar figure addressing reporters in his desert fatigues. He spoke in plain English, instead of using military jargon.

But the adulation he received from the American public quickly gave way to second-guessing by many historians, who questioned the decision by President George H.W. Bush and senior members of his administration to end the ground war after just four days, allowing Hussein to remain in power and much of his Republican Guard to retreat from Kuwait unscathed.

In a television interview after his triumphant return to the United States, Gen. Schwarzkopf claimed that he wanted to continue the war. But his assertion was sharply contested by Richard B. Cheney, then secretary of defense, and Powell, who said that Gen. Schwarzkopf had concurred in the decision by the president and his administration to end combat in four days.

Gen. Schwarzkopf, who retired in the summer of 1991, backed off his claim in his 1992 memoir, “It Doesn’t Take a Hero,” for which he received an advance of almost $6 million. He criticized unnamed civilians in the Bush administration for trying to hastily speed commencement of the ground war.

Rick Atkinson, in his 1993 book “Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War,” described Gen. Schwarzkopf as a volcanic figure who threatened to fire numerous subordinates and often behaved like an imperial dictator. But he concluded that Schwarzkopf made “no significant error of strategy or tactic.”

[JackRiddler]

Now I guess I'll have to cross-post this from the Bush-Almost-Dead-Thread:

Right, exhibit on liberals being idiots about the first Bush regime: immediate tribute thread on Democratic Underground.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?c ... pid=349371

Several people have memories longer than those of a slug, so you have some perfectly reasonable comments, like someone's quote from the general during Desert Shield/Storm, "Anyone here who thinks this is about oil is in the wrong business."

Yeah, right.

Here was my first post on the DU thread:

His legacy.

http://deoxy.org/wc/warcrime.htm

A subthread followed in which someone called him evil and was beaten up and had their post hidden by jury (a very funny ritual they've got over there). One of the maudlin ones said the general's due was, "Simple respect. Learning how to show respect is a skill worth learning..." So I replied, "Did you send condolence cards to Bin Ladin's family?" Got me a jury decision about 48 seconds later.

ALERTER'S COMMENTS:

This post is over the top, and the idea that you would compare the two men just plain wrong.

JURY RESULTS

A randomly-selected Jury of DU members completed their review of this alert at Thu Dec 27, 2012, 10:02 PM, and voted 5-1 to HIDE IT.

Juror #1 voted to HIDE IT and said: Post is over-the-top and disrespectful to our members of our armed forces.
Juror #2 voted to HIDE IT and said: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT and said: No explanation given
Juror #4 voted to HIDE IT and said: Nasty post.
Juror #5 voted to HIDE IT and said: That one pretty much covers them all. Disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate. Yep, that's all of them.
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: No explanation given

So being mean to a general is disrespectful to all our brave fighting men and women of our armed forces. (Hey, fuck their armed forces!) My crime merits a mini-me farce-play of the Tucholsky prosecution for his statement, "Soldaten sind Moerder."

And I agree there's little comparison between OBL and the general. Bin Ladin, who spent at least half his career as a confirmable CIA asset, was kind of a wholesale inciter but only a retail killer. He never got to murder several hundred thousand civilians in a one-month aerial bombing campaign before burning and burying several armies of patsy-recruits who never wanted to be on that front and just sought to disperse and go home. OBL never got to poison the water supply and land of a country for several generations, like Schwarzkopf. Or to laugh about the Turkey Shoot on live TV with no fear of the consequences.

.

PS - Tampa! Can we work this into the Petraeus drama somehow. Did Jill whatserface (I've already forgotten!) and her robo-twin hang out with Stormin' Norman? Come on people, this is RI. Make some shit up!

[Col. Quisp]

Poppy already commented, from his sick bed, I presume:
"Barbara and I mourn the loss of a true American patriot and one of the great military leaders of his generation. A distinguished member of that `Long Gray Line' hailing from West Point, Gen. Norm Schwarzkopf, to me, epitomized the `duty, service, country' creed that has defended our freedom and seen this great nation through our most trying international crises. More than that, he was a good and decent man – and a dear friend. Barbara and I send our condolences to his wife, Brenda, and his wonderful family." – former President George H.W. Bush.

[jlaw172364]

A lot of highway of death photos have been disappeared of the internet, or at least in the top search results. I'd be interested in a link, if anyone has one, of an archive. I imagine cryptome might have one. I'll check there and post if I find any.

[NeonLX]

Hope it was a really painful passing.

[82_28]

I've written this story here before (cheers BPH ), but I was in this special program in HS for all us kids who ditched and/or got pregnant and such. This girl brought in photos her marine step dad took along the great highway massacre. It was just just a bunch of fun loving death!

They put corpses hands on other corpses crotches and then would pose next to it -- snap. Put cigarettes in the mouths of them -- snap. Took pictures of severed limbs. You name it.

She stole the pictures from him for the day and told us we were never to tell anyone we saw them. This was pre ubiquitous Internet so it was a "big deal" to see such awful disregard for fellow humans back then -- something we'd never seen before. But I was probably in the way way minority. Everybody else thought it was cool as fuck.

Adios, Norman. Enjoy hell.

[8bitagent]

The strange cognitive dissonance many "liberals" have regarding the 88-92 Bush administration is definitely bizarre. We're talking about an administration that used experimental stealth weapons to turn innocent Panamanians into gelatanous goo with estimates of up to three thousand killed around Panama City...just to get a former CIA drug buddy.

We're talking about an administration that faked a number of intel briefings just like the neocons to further sell the 1991 invasion of Iraq(Kuwaiti incubators, Saudi border force amassing, etc)
Oh and those folks need to google "April Glaspie". They should at least know how the CIA under Bush got a lot of people to form an uprising against Saddam, only to laughingly turn their back
at the very last minute. Lucy football. Now yeah, Saddam was a douche. Sure. But he was our douche. And it's funny he was hung specifically for crimes he allegedly did during the 1982 period where
he was a love child of the US government.

As far as Osama bin Laden, I've come to realize he was probably groomed for his inevitable placecard holder role in this bizarre theatrical production from an early age. I mean, the Saudi bin Laden company's star architect designed the Twin Towers. The fix was in a long time ago. Bin Laden did help modernize Khartoum in the 90's. Most of his money however, by the late 90's seemed to mostly come from rich Gulf state elites who in turn were getting their money from wealthy Western and European corporations. I estimate a sizeably chunk of the $250,000 Saudis spent on the 9/11 op came from British BAE defense funds and other euro money slushed through the complex maze of Dubai banking channels.

[8bitagent]

Side note: I had to really search on all the main news channels for the news of his passing. The "Fiscal cliff" and celebrity news is dominating the front page.
I guess the final bit of irony/payback is that he wasn't even a sub headline today. And in today's ADHD 24 hour news channel/mass social network infotainment world, that's a huge
slap in the face.

Btw, I wonder how many typical liberals know how many Iraqis(including many children) died from Clinton's unbelievably horrific sanctions as well as the 8 years of carpet bombing?

[Nordic]

Yeah, I just looked through the news, wondering how they would gussy up his legacy. I was expecting to see big headlines and bigger stories about what a tremendous human being he was, a virtual saint of the military.

But there was nothing there that I could even find.

Which, honestly, is just WEIRD AS HELL.

Isn't it?

[JackRiddler]

It's really not so weird. He's ancient history in media time. Who?

[justdrew]

kids who weren't even born at gulf war 1 are fighting in gulf war 2, he is indeed ancient history.

[elfismiles]

His connection with the Persian Gulf region began very early. In 1946, when he was 12, he and the rest of his family joined their father, stationed in Tehran, Iran, where his father went on to be instrumental in Operation Ajax, eventually forming the Shah's secret police SAVAK, as well. He attended the Community High School in Tehran, later the International School of Geneva at La Châtaigneraie, Frankfurt High School in Frankfurt, Germany and attended and graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Schwarzkopf,_Jr