Expert's critique on Iraq winds up in political swirl

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04047/273658.stm

CARLISLE, Pa. -- Douglas Lovelace, a retired Army colonel who is director of the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, knew he had a hot potato on his hands. He had no idea how hot it was.

It was a monograph written by visiting scholar Jeffrey Record, in which Record argued that the invasion of Iraq was a distraction from the war on terror and was diverting resources from the much higher priority of defeating the al-Qaida network that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

"In conflating Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida, the administration unnecessarily expanded the by launching a preventive war against a state that was not at war with the United States and that posed no direct or imminent threat to the United States at the expense of continued attention and effort to protect the United States from a terrorist organization with which the United States was at war," said Record, a professor at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala. who is spending a year at the Army War College.

Lovelace knew Record's paper would be controversial, so he took the unusual step of running it past the commandant of the Army War College, Maj. Gen. David Huntoon, who approved it for publication after asking Record to tone down some "offensive" language. It was published in December.

[otohara]

1. Jeff Speaks For Many

in the army, like it or not Maj. Gen.