This is John Batchel, conversation with Captain Steve Deal, U.S. Navy retired, has worked inside

the Pentagon for years, also was on active duty on sea, on land, Afghanistan, Iraq, looking

at what needs to be done. The generals, the three-and-four-star generals. They are not the future, I understand.

And Steve tells a story about George Marshall and the French in the Second War. And what was wrong

was the leadership and how to correct it. The leadership must be corrected at the Pentagon.

Much more of this tonight.

Steve is very well informed.

Understands the politics of the Pentagon correctly.

To my reading.

Steve Deal.

Captain, United States Navy retired,

and he includes the Navy in his thinking as well.

Leadership.

More of this tonight.

General Marshall knew that it was going to be completely different.

And at the same time, as I quote in the piece, Mark Blos, who was a French Army captain,

a scholar, a historian. He had fought in World

War I and World War II. He looked at what was going on and did right at the fall of France.

And he laid the blame mostly towards the leadership class and that their inability to imagine

a war that was new.

And he said this famously, this failure of intellect, this failure of intellect to face the Germans was the most ennerving failure of all.

And it just said a lot about their nation and how they prepare for war, their society, and what they thought was right, wrong.

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