In-fighting . . .

My post yesterday surprised a few people who hadn't realized that there was so much controversy in the Allied command during the war.

Believe me, that just barely scratched the surface. If you think McChrystal's staff dissed people in the Rolling Stone article, you should read some of the diaries and even official communications from World War II.

And these guys were taking live ammo into meetings.

Of course, one key difference is that 99 percent of the controversy was kept out of the newspapers and radio reports at the time. Partly because of censorship, partly because of self-censorship*, but mostly because Blackberries and the internet hadn't been invented.

And Twitter. We can blame it on that.

They never teach you about that in high school. Which I guess is why everyone acts so surprised to find that different members of an administration - whether it's Bush's or Obama's - don't get along.

* For example: the slapping incident was well-known among war correspondents, who actually reported it to Eisenhower. They could easily have written about it once they returned to the U.S. But it wasn't reported until months later, and then by a columnist in the States.