George Packer, the author of The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, has written an article that is partly in response to former CIA director George Tenet's memoir At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA.
As has been the case with much of the press relating to Tenet's book, Packer's article is scathing. Packer discusses the general lack of accountability in Washington these days, and thus he doesn't simply concern himself with Tenet's memoir.
I've found that Packer is always worth reading. I wanted to excerpt a rather pungent paragraph and then provide a link to an article that Packer brought to my attention.
First, the quotation:
. . . under the Bush Administration no senior civilian official or military officer has been held responsible for what will probably turn out to be the greatest foreign-policy disaster in American history. (Donald Rumsfeld was thrown overboard only after he became too much trouble politically.) Those in highest authority have been kept in office (Dick Cheney), promoted (Gonzales, Condoleezza Rice), honored with medals (Tenet, General Tommy Franks, Paul Bremer), or sent off with encomiums (Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld). Generals who held command over chaos and looming defeat have received additional stars and more powerful posts, such as George Casey, Jr., who was promoted earlier this year to Army chief of staff. Recently, an Army lieutenant colonel and Iraq veteran named Paul Yingling published an essay in the Armed Forces Journal, entitled "A Failure in Generalship." Yingling's open indictment of a military leadership composed of yes-men was the first by an active-duty officer during the Iraq war, and it expressed in analytical terms a simmering rage among lower-ranking soldiers. "A private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war," he wrote.
Second, the link. You'll find Lt. Col. Yingling's essay in the May 2007 issue of Armed Forces Journal.