Paul Rieckhoff on Bush's new plan

From his official bio:

Paul Rieckhoff is the executive director and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the first and largest organization for veterans of the War on Terror. During his time in the Adamiyah section of central Baghdad, he led his light infantry platoon on hundreds of combat patrols with the 3rd Infantry and 1st Armored Divisions. He continues to serve his country as an Infantry Officer in the New York Army National Guard.

Rieckhoff wrote a book about his time in Iraq, Chasing Ghosts. Here is part of the description of the book:

As a First Lieutenant and Infantry Platoon Leader for the U.S. Army National Guard charged with leading thirty-eight men in Iraq, Paul Rieckhoff followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. After Rieckhoff volunteered to take part in the invasion of Iraq, he and his soldiers spent almost a year in one of the most dangerous and volatile areas of Baghdad, where they struggled to maintain order, protect Iraqi civilians, track down insurgents, and defend themselves against sniper and roadside bomb attacks.

But it was clear to Rieckhoff almost from the get-go that America's mission in Iraq was deeply flawed - and that his platoon was overchallenged and underequipped. If there was a plan to stabilize Baghdad after the invasion, no one had let them in on it. And with so many obstacles to overcome, they faced enemies that included thousands of armed, angry, and unemployed men who had been unleashed into the streets when the U.S. government disbanded the Iraqi army.

In other words, Rieckhoff has firsthand knowledge of Iraq and, through IAVA, has continued to be involved with troops in Iraq. With this in mind, I present the following exchange between Rieckhoff and Keith Olbermann on the January 10, 2007, edition of "Countdown."

OLBERMANN: Senator Gordon Smith, the Oregon Republican, who memorably took to the floor of the Senate early in December to essentially withdraw his support of the war, today said the president‘s plan, quote, exalts hope over experience. What are your members and the active service personnel you‘re in touch with feeling about that?

REICKHOFF: They agree with the senator. It‘s clear that the president still doesn‘t understand the enemy we‘re fighting, and he doesn‘t understand what‘s going to work to fight them. This is not going to work. This plan to increase troops by 20,000 is really not going to make tangible difference on the security situation in Baghdad, or in the greater country of Iraq. It may work for a short time, but over time, this is really more just middling around the edges. It‘s too many troops for most Americans, and for the Democrats, clearly, it‘s too few to crush the insurgency.

If you want to increase troops, you‘ve got to do it by hundreds of thousands, and it‘s probably too late to do that anyway. So it really shows me that the president doesn‘t understand what our men and women are trying to do on the ground every day.

OLBERMANN: The “Military Times” poll, can you offer us some sense of what you are actually hear from rank and file military personnel right now, when so many of them are on second tours, third tours, now perhaps fourth tours? The suggestion that a majority now disapprove of the president‘s conduct of the war, is there an extra bit of information to that? Is there a conduct of the war they would prefer?

REICKHOFF: Well, they feel like this war‘s been done on the cheap throughout. And I think the president‘s new plan shows that that is not changing. This is another half cooked plan to try to middle around the edges and our people are frustrated. They don‘t see progress. And on the personnel side, divorce rates are up. The rate of suicide in theater has doubled over the previous year. Veterans coming home are facing post traumatic stress disorder and mental health issues. And there‘s a tremendous human strain to this war.

And that‘s the side you don‘t see on the news every day, people going back for a third tour is really unprecedented. The third infantry division may be going back for their third year in this war, coming up this year, and that‘s really putting a stress on our people, and they‘re not seeing progress on the ground, and their leadership doesn‘t understand the enemy they‘re facing, or how to fight it.

OLBERMANN: Do they sense—do they feel that they‘re filling some sort of historical gap now, that they are time servers in a time serving war, like the troops who were stuck in Vietnam after the 27th of January, 1973, when Henry Kissinger said peace is at hand and everybody had to wait it out until they got home?

REICKHOFF: Yes, they feel like this is more of a political move than a military one. If the president was serious about upping the troop numbers, he should have done it three years ago. And now they‘re just frustrated. They‘re tired of these half moves that don‘t really understand the new enemy that we‘re fighting. These are tactics from decades ago, not the enemy we‘re fighting today.

Politically, this may be very risky. And I said last week, people are calling this a Hail Mary. If we‘re going to use a football analogy, we‘re down in the fourth quarter. This isn‘t a Hail Mary, this is a draw play. It‘s even more stupid than a Hail Mary.

(emphasis added).