So Big Dick Cheney, in a bulletproof vest, gets roundly booed by the people in Washington, DC, in an incident so humiliating the Bush-administration teat-sucking New York Times declined to mention it at all in its story. Then there's that ongoing Fitzgerald kerfuffle that's raising Big Dick's blood pressure.
Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, former Director of Operations at the Pentagon's military joint staff broke his silence in this Time story, "Why Iraq Was a Mistake."
Today, there's another career military man speaking his mind about Bloody Rummy.
Oh, say can you say--"full-scale frontal assault"?
RUMSFELD REBUKED BY RETIRED GENERALS
Ex-Iraq Commander Calls for Resignation
The retired commander of key forces in Iraq called yesterday for Donald H. Rumsfeld to step down, joining several other former top military commanders who have harshly criticized the defense secretary's authoritarian style for making the military's job more difficult."Fool me once--I won't get fooled again?"
"I think we need a fresh start" at the top of the Pentagon, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004-2005, said in an interview. "We need leadership up there that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them. And that leadership needs to understand teamwork."
Batiste noted that many of his peers feel the same way. "It speaks volumes that guys like me are speaking out from retirement about the leadership climate in the Department of Defense," he said earlier yesterday on CNN.
Batiste's comments resonate especially within the Army: It is widely known there that he was offered a promotion to three-star rank to return to Iraq and be the No. 2 U.S. military officer there but he declined because he no longer wished to serve under Rumsfeld. Also, before going to Iraq, he worked at the highest level of the Pentagon, serving as the senior military assistant to Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense.
Batiste said he believes that the administration's handling of the Iraq war has violated fundamental military principles, such as unity of command and unity of effort. In other interviews, Batiste has said he thinks the violation of another military principle -- ensuring there are enough forces -- helped create the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal by putting too much responsibility on incompetent officers and undertrained troops.
His comments follow similar recent high-profile attacks on Rumsfeld by three other retired flag officers, amid indications that many of their peers feel the same way.
"We won't get fooled again," retired Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, who held the key post of director of operations on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2000 to 2002, wrote in an essay in Time magazine this week. Listing a series of mistakes such as "McNamara-like micromanagement," a reference to the Vietnam War-era secretary of defense, Newbold called for "replacing Rumsfeld and many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach."
Full WaPo story here.
Rumsfeld
Cheney
Iraq War
Time
3 comments:
It's great they're speaking up. I'm afraid that psychotic Rummy, Cheney and Bush are quite willing to nuke Iran just because they think it's a slam dunk, and because no one has balls enough to stop them.
Rummy is the main offender
During the Abu Graidhib scandal it was Rumsfeld who ordered the American soldiers, e.g. England, to torture the prisoners to get the 'truth' out. He specially chose not very intelligent people who had it in them to be cruel. He asked Miller from Guantanamo Bay to come to Bagdad to teach the prison warders how to make them talk. And they left the rest to those lower rated soldiers, who went to court for something that was ordered them to do. Rumsfeld should have been emprisoned and Miller the same. There are many more higher officers involved in that scandal, but they all escaped from the justice system.
Besides, Bush knew what Rumsfeld was going to do and never said no, stop that.
Yep.
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