Word: dannatt
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...democracy, generals take their orders from civilian politicians and, as a rule, do their best not to embarrass them. Seems the chief of the British army didn't get the memo. Last week General Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, gave interviews to [an error occurred while processing this directive] the London Daily Mail and the bbc that had 10 Downing Street scrambling. True, Dannatt pointed out that British troops had made enough progress to turn over control of two southern provinces to Iraqi forces. But he also said that "the mere fact that we are still in some...
...That's just what happened this week, though it took a British and not an American general to start the dialogue. The straight-talking chief of the British Army, Gen. Richard Dannatt, gave interviews to the London Daily Mail and the BBC that had 10 Downing Street scrambling. Though he pointed out that British troops had made enough progress to turn over control of two southern provinces to Iraqi forces, he also noted that they weren't invited in at the outset and are widely unpopular...
...When officials working for Tony Blair got first reports of Dannatt's newspaper interview, they were baffled and wondered why he had taken the army's top job if he disagreed with its principal mission. When the full text arrived, they determined he was not frontally criticizing Blair's current policy, which also favors an exit from Iraq as soon as Iraqi forces can take over, but instead was sticking up for his beloved army in a way someone more media-savvy might have done without leaving so many hostages to tabloid fortune. At a press conference, in fact, Blair...
...that embarrasses Downing St.- as well as Washington - how difficult if not impossible that policy will be to achieve. Blair would never state that his ambitions for Iraq might have been na?ve, that British troops are a magnet for attack or should leave soon. The fact that Dannatt's views are widely shared among senior officers only intensifies the awkwardness for the Prime Minister...
...Surviving the slippery slopes of power may be hard for generals, and of course it is right that they respect civilian control by not wading into political debates. But with lives are at stake, Dannatt felt compelled to speak: "Honesty is what it is all about. The truth will out. We have got to speak the truth...