The Mythical Shinseki is a popular fantasy political game

Reporting from Washington, CNN Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre played with dynamite recently. He told the corroborated inside story that most media, and Americans, still deny, about General Shinseki a member of the  Joint Chiefs of Staff in the run up to the Iraq invasion in 2003.

The myth he dispels is that “If there are two things everyone knows about Gen. Shinseki, they are that he always thinks ahead to what needs may be down the road, and is not afraid to strongly speak his mind to the president of the United States.”

Indeed, Shinseki did get sideways with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and probably others when he ordered that all soldiers wear black berets, a move that infuriated the special forces community, for whom the berets were a badge signifying their elite status. Rumsfeld, according to aides, was particularly miffed that Shinseki spent so much effort changing the Army’s head gear, when the nation was at war.

Now that’s a man (Shinseki) who should work for Gucci.

Many more people believed this myth than believed the myth that Saddam Hussein was involved in a direct way with the events of Sept 11, 2001. Besides so many Americans being seduced by this, most of the whole world continues to believe that Shinseki stood up to Rumsfeld and Bush and pushed them to stop from going into Iraq with too few troops instead of the required 300,000 or more he asserted were required for success in Iraq and that he was not only ignored, indeed he was fired.

When he announced Shinseki as his selection for the secretary of veterans affairs, President-elect Barack Obama called him someone who “always stood on principle.” followed by “No one will ever doubt that this former Army chief of staff has the courage to stand up for our troops and our veterans.”

McIntyre wrote extensively about all sides of this masterfully marketed myth in his original fact based reporting. His minority conclusion includes such individual snippets as follows:

Shinseki’s reputation as a “truth-teller” has been burnished beyond what the facts support.

Shinseki wasn’t advocating 300,000 troops be dispatched into Iraq. In fact, he said specifically that the forces mobilized in the region to that point were probably enough.”

many……. have elevated his now-famous February 2003 testimony to the level of Scripture.

It’s an appealing narrative, but the facts as we know them are not nearly so complimentary to the retired Army chief.

You see, Shinseki never made any recommendation for more troops for Iraq.

If he had concerns about the Iraq war plans, he kept them to himself. He admitted as much in a rare e-mail exchange with Newsweek magazine in 2006.

Shinseki never objected to the war plans, and he didn’t press for any changes.

if….any concerns about the plans before they went to the president, Shinseki kept silent.

But the idea that Shinseki was a strong advocate for a bigger force and that no one listened vastly overstates his role.

It’s one of those Washington myths that are almost impossible to dispel — like the popular misconception that Shinseki was fired for standing up to Rumsfeld.

That myth is so pervasive, the authoritative Associated Press repeated it again Saturday night, saying “Shinseki was removed from [his] post after challenging the Bush administration.”

He did not stand up to Rumsfeld, nor was he fired.

Now that Shinseki is working for someone who believes in him, that could well turn out to be true — no matter how much he kept his counsel to himself.”

he did owe the president his best military advice.

it’s true that in retrospect, many U.S. commanders believe there should have been more troops sent to Iraq, even though it’s far from clear that would have prevented the insurgency and sectarian violence that the Pentagon failed to anticipate.

Jamie McIntyre in this reporting demonstrates how a reporter can be a man of principle.