Is General Patraous (spelling?) a puppet who will mimic whatever the Comander in Chiefs ideas?
I would not go so far as call him a puppet but general officer appointments and promotions are approved by the President. The problem is that they appoint and keep only those that tend to agree with them and follow the administration’s line of thinking. Given the way the military is used and relied on leaves little room for a general officer to stay if he does not fall into that category. I think that is one of the things that is basically wrong with this situation. The original generals planned for 170,000 troops to be deployed; with the surge we are at about that now. They also wanted the Iraqi military left intact; we have for the last two years been restoring them and their military after spending three years disbanding it. The original generals said if we do this we will be there for several years if not longer. This started in 2003 and its now 2008. Some of those same generals were asked or forced to retire or resign and move on and here we are now doing exactly what some of them
