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zorbman
blarrr


Registered: 06/04/04
Posts: 5,952
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New military offensive against Rumsfeld
#5517279 - 04/14/06 09:23 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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WASHINGTON - Three years after the fall of Baghdad and Iraq's disastrous plunge into chaos, US military brass appear to be engaged in a new campaign: getting rid of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
While the offensive has so far been limited to generals who have recently retired from the service, they claim strong support for their views on the part of active-duty officers.
The latest demand for Rumsfeld's resignation came Wednesday when Major General John Batiste, who commanded the First Infantry Division in Iraq, called for a "fresh start in the Pentagon".
"We need a leader who understands teamwork, a leader who knows to build teams, a leader that does it without intimidation," Batiste told a CNN interviewer.
Batiste's remarks, which follow highly public demands from other top generals for Rumsfeld's resignation over the past several weeks, came as public confidence in the policies of the administration of President George W Bush, both in Iraq and in the more general "war on terror", has dwindled to all-time lows.
The growing perception, fueled by recent disclosures regarding the selective leaking of intelligence authorized by both Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, that the administration consciously tried to manipulate the public into supporting the Iraq war and to discredit its critics has contributed to the continuing erosion in popular support, even among Republicans.
The conviction that Rumsfeld made major strategic errors by insisting on invading Iraq with a relatively light force that proved incapable of imposing order on the country, let alone suppressing the insurgency that followed, has also taken hold, particularly after last month's publication by two New York Times reporters of an authoritative account of the war, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (See ATol's book review).
Based on extensive interviews with both retired and active-duty officers who took part in the war, the book found that Rumsfeld and his top aides believed that Washington could "oust a dictator, usher in a new era in Iraq, [and] shift the balance of power in the Middle East in the United States's favor" on the cheap, and that the war "would suddenly be brought to an end when the regime's ministries were seized and its leader toppled".
The military's unease with Rumsfeld's plans for going to war date originally from his summary dismissal in early 2003 of then-army chief of staff General Eric Shinseki's testimony before Congress that the occupation of Iraq would require "several hundred thousand troops".
Shinseki's effective early retirement, apparently in retaliation for speaking out with such candour, was taken by most officers as a message from Rumsfeld that public disagreement with his views could have serious career consequences.
When, by early 2004, it had become clear that Washington had indeed not deployed sufficient troops to control Iraq, a number of retired generals began speaking out forcefully against Rumsfeld and his civilian advisers.
In May 2004, the former head of the US Central Command, retired Marine Gen Anthony Zinni, accused them of "dereliction of duty" in failing to prepare adequately for the war and called on Bush to fire them if they did not resign.
In recent weeks, Zinni has renewed those demands, stressing in various public appearances that Rumsfeld had deliberately ignored extensive contingency planning developed under his command in the late 1990s for an Iraq invasion and overruled officers who raised questions about his own plans.
In the past three weeks, he has been joined by three other retired generals, including Batiste.
In a remarkably frank New York Times column published on March 19, retired army Maj Gen Paul Eaton, who had been in charge of training the Iraqi military during the first year of the occupation, argued that Rumsfeld "has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically" and "has put the Pentagon at the mercy of his cold warrior's view of the world and his unrealistic confidence in technology to replace manpower".
"In the five years Mr Rumsfeld has presided over the Pentagon," Eaton wrote, "I have seen a climate of groupthink become dominant and a growing reluctance by experienced military men and civilians to challenge the notions of the senior leadership."
Eaton's blast was followed this week by an anguished column in Time magazine by retired Marine Lt Gen Gregory Newbold, the top operations officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff before the invasion, who assailed the brass, including himself, for "act[ing] timidly when their voices urgently needed to be heard". "The consequence of the military's quiescence," he wrote, "was that a fundamentally flawed plan was executed for an invented war ...
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD15Ak01.html
-------------------- “The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.” -- Rudiger Dornbusch
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tak
geo's henchman



Registered: 11/20/00
Posts: 3,776
Loc: nowhereland
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Re: New military offensive against Rumsfeld [Re: zorbman]
#5517323 - 04/14/06 09:42 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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That takes balls, im glad someone is man enough to do what they gotta do though
-------------------- The DJ's took pills to stay awake and play for seven days.
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Luddite
I watch Fox News


Registered: 03/23/06
Posts: 2,946
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Re: New military offensive against Rumsfeld [Re: tak]
#5518372 - 04/15/06 09:26 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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They'll probably get an even bigger killer.
Edited by Luddite (04/15/06 09:26 AM)
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daimyo
Monticello

Registered: 05/13/04
Posts: 7,751
Last seen: 12 years, 21 hours
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Re: New military offensive against Rumsfeld [Re: zorbman]
#5518520 - 04/15/06 10:32 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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I like Rummy as a person, but he sucks as Sec. Def.
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"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
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Phred
Fred's son


Registered: 10/18/00
Posts: 12,949
Loc: Dominican Republic
Last seen: 9 years, 18 days
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Re: New military offensive against Rumsfeld [Re: zorbman]
#5533256 - 04/19/06 11:19 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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U.S. Generals Call for Resignation of Media Leaders
by Scott Ott
(2006-04-19) ? A growing movement of retired and active-duty U.S. military officers, angry at the mismanagement, arrogance and even deception that have hampered U.S. efforts to secure peace and democracy in Iraq, have begun quietly calling for the resignation of top leaders they blame for the difficulties.
?I believe that it?s time for them to step down,? said one unnamed retired three-star general. ?The editors of The New York Times and Washington Post and the news producers at CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC should resign effective immediately.?
?They?ve formed a tight cabal that focuses only on news that reinforces their neo-journ ideology,? said another unnamed general. ?Despite the urgent need for actual reporting from Iraq, they have failed to put enough boots on the ground in country.?
?As civilians, they make editorial decisions without any understanding of history or military strategy,? said another retired officer, ?and they?re trying to run the war coverage from hotels in the cloister of the Green Zone, without consulting with our leaders and troops on the frontlines.?
The generals who all requested anonymity, in the words of one, ?so I won?t be bothered by a bunch of calls from reporters writing redundant stories,? said the leading news media gatekeepers should be replaced by ?more centrist voices? who will be honest with America, and not blindly devoted ?advancing the neo-journ agenda.?
?We?d like to see leaders in there who will cover the Iraq story as Americans, or at least as those who believe in liberty,? said one active-duty general who has worked closely with reporters and editors.
Meanwhile, New York Times Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. brushed off what he called ?the incessant drumbeat of negativity? from opponents of his administration.
?You can?t relieve your top commanders while your side is winning,? Mr. Sulzberger said. ?Frankly, the Pentagon doesn?t direct enough attention to the car bombings, sectarian strife and rumblings of civil war which show that we?re making progress in Iraq every day.?
http://www.scrappleface.com/?p=2241
Phred
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Silversoul
Rhizome


Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 23,576
Loc: The Barricades
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Re: New military offensive against Rumsfeld [Re: Phred]
#5533278 - 04/19/06 11:24 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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The Onion > Scrappleface
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Alex213
Stranger
Registered: 08/22/05
Posts: 1,839
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Re: New military offensive against Rumsfeld [Re: Phred]
#5536338 - 04/20/06 01:57 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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We?d like to see leaders in there who will cover the Iraq story as American?
I'd like ones who will write the truth
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barfightlard
tales of theinexpressible



Registered: 01/29/03 
Posts: 8,670
Loc: Canoodia
Last seen: 14 years, 1 month
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Re: New military offensive against Rumsfeld [Re: Alex213]
#5536532 - 04/20/06 05:16 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
Alex213 said: We?d like to see leaders in there who will cover the Iraq story as American?
I'd like ones who will write the truth
No shit....objective journalism has nevert been a strong point.
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"What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, say, think, who I fuck, what I take into my body - as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet?" - Bill Hicks
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