Posted on 04/13/2006 4:24:49 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON – Crusty and unapologetic, Donald H. Rumsfeld is the public face of an unpopular war and a target of unrelenting criticism. A growing number of commanders who served under him say he has botched the Iraq operation, ignored the advice of his generals and should be replaced.
The White House insists the defense secretary retains President Bush's confidence. Few close to the administration expect him to be shown the door.
“The president believes Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a very fine job during a challenging period in our nation's history,” Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said Thursday as the administration circled its wagons around the embattled Pentagon chief.
Two more retired generals called for Rumsfeld's resignation on Thursday, bringing the number this month to six.
Retired Army Major Gen. John Riggs told National Public Radio that Rumsfeld fostered an “atmosphere of arrogance.” Retired Gen. Charles Swannack told CNN that Rumsfeld micromanaged the war. “We need a new secretary of defense,” he said.
Military experts say the parade of recently retired military brass calling for Rumsfeld's resignation is troubling and threatens to undermine strong support Bush has enjoyed among the officer corps and troops.
With public anti-war sentiment increasing, “the president and his team cannot afford to lose that support,” said Kurt Campbell, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense.
Yet for Bush to try to distance himself from Rumsfeld “would call into question everything about the last three years' strategy in ways the White House worries would send a very negative message,” said Campbell, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Joining the criticism earlier this week was retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who served as an infantry division commander in Iraq until last November. He called for a “fresh start at the Pentagon,” accusing Rumsfeld of ignoring sound military decision-making and seeking to intimidate those in uniform.
Earlier calls for Rumsfeld's replacement came from retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, retired Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold and retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton.
The most nettlesome member of Bush's Cabinet, Rumsfeld has been a lightning rod since the war began in March 2003.
He was blamed for committing too few U.S. troops and for underestimating the strength of the insurgency. He took heat in 2004 over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the U.S. Army-run Abu Ghraib prison, and for a brusque response he gave to an Army National Guard soldier in Kuwait who questioned him on inadequate armor.
Republicans in Congress have offered Rumsfeld little in the way of public support.
Pentagon spokesman Eric Ruff said Thursday that Rumsfeld has not talked to the White House about resigning – and is not considering it.
As to the latest general to call for Rumsfeld's resignation, “I don't know how many generals there are. There are a couple thousand at least, and they're going to have opinions,” Ruff said. “It's not surprising, we're in a war.”
But it is surprising, especially because it's a time of war, said P.J. Crowley, a retired Air Force colonel who served as a Pentagon spokesman in both Republican and Democratic administrations and was a national security aide to former President Clinton.
“This is a very significant vote of no confidence and I think the president has to take this into account. The military is saying it does not trust its civilian leadership,” said Crowley, now a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress.
Rumsfeld himself answered “no” when asked this week whether the march of retired generals was hurting his ability to do his job. “There's nothing wrong with people having opinions,” he said.
Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has become Rumsfeld's strongest defender in uniform. “He does his homework. He works weekends, he works nights. People can question my judgment or his judgment, but they should never question the dedication, the patriotism and the work ethic of Secretary Rumsfeld,” Pace said.
Clinton, a Vietnam war protester who avoided the draft, was mistrusted by many in the military, and some top-ranking officers publicly questioned his policies in congressional testimony. But Bush, a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam era, has counted on strong support on military bases, one of his favorite destinations.
Bush's dilemma, said Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst with the Brookings Institution, is that Bush “shares a lot of the responsibility for the key decisions on Iraq.”
“Bush is implicated. For Bush to fire Rumsfeld is for Bush to declare himself a failure as president. Iraq is the main issue of his presidency,” said O'Hanlon, who supported Bush's decision to invade Iraq and said he still supports the war.
Proper equipment? Do you mean uparmored humvees? Who the heck thought that the army would need to put armor on recon vehicles or trucks? I know someone who came in with the follow on troops. Yes, they had crappyt humvees. but when he left Iraq more than a year later, the still un-uparmored had last thgrough months of street patrols, time out west, and battle at Najaf and had not a single bullet hole in it. On the other hand, he watched a tank being blow apart by an IEP. How much training did the troops get on IEDs or even RPG? Monday morning quarterbacking. What about next weekend's game? Know how to win that one?
Believe me, if you were in "Air Farce" (Captain USAFR (retired) here), or the Navy, you'd be hearing the same thing. And there would be some truth to the matter. I work for a division of a non profit company (but we aren't' subsidized either) that designs and builds training systems , historically almost exclusively for the military. There is no new business to be found right now, all the O&M dollars and much of the R&D money as well is going to support the war, there is no money for new capabilities, except for a few big ticket items, but even many of those have been chopped.
Rummy has done a good job in some areas, but in others he seems to think it's the late 70s again, with a Dim Congress, rather than the RINO one he's got.
The Generals interviewed at the time about the supposed troop shortage said that they didn't need any more soldiers there; they'd just become 'targets'.
Yes, good post. I have quotes from General Franks and others that support what you said. I'll have to dig them up.
I think both Franks and Rummy were in agreement that in an asymmetrical war, too many solders on the ground does mean too many "targets".
Thanks for the refresher. I remembered everything more or less correctly. The lives that were lost were lost for nothing, the crew had already been freed. That is not to criticize the men involved in the rescue attempt, as usualy they served bravely and did the best they could under the circumstnances, but rather the intelligence types and the DoD leadership who messed things up pretty badly.
agreed, Im not trying to downplay the loss or plans that went astray or rub ya about it, it was a long time ago, most folks don't remember it anyway.
Ford had been in office for 9 months after
Nixon's resignation, Rumsfeld had just assumed leadership position with DoD (not sure what date he took over in 1975), we're were closing out the Vietnam activities at that time as well.
Thanks for your service, btw.
Get with the lib program. Don't you know that the SecDef is supposed to disregard the word of the men on the ground and their officers and instead only heed the advice of sensitive retired liberal or LaRouchie armchair generals?
That guy could afford to lose some face.
34 - four star generals/admirals
124 - three star generals/admirals
278 - two star generals/admirals
439 - one star generals/admirals
Throw in the U.S. Coast Guard and you have 900 generals and admirals on active duty today.
Of those 900 15-20% of them will retire every year. Now, run that number out for the six years that Secretary Rumsfeld has been in his position and these five or six disgruntled generals have about as much significance as a Constitution Party Candidate for President...and that isn't even counting all the generals and admirals that retired before Secretary Rumsfeld took over.
The Center for American Progress...
Robert Dreyfuss reports in the March 1, 2004 edition of The Nation: “The idea for the Center began with discussions in 2002 between [Morton] Halperin and George Soros, the billionaire investor. … Halperin, who heads the office of Soros’ Open Society Institute, brought [former Clinton chief of staff John] Podesta into the discussion, and beginning in late 2002 Halperin and Podesta circulated a series of papers to funders.” -----Robert Dreyfuss, “An Idea Factory for the Democrats,” The Nation, March 1, 2004, 18
Soros and Halperin then recruited Harold Ickes – chief fundraiser and former deputy chief of staff for the Clinton White House – to help organize the Center. It was launched on July 7, 2003 as the American Majority Institute, but has operated under the name Center for American Progress (CAP) since September 1, 2003.
* CAP : I'm reading Madam Hillary which is a more interesting book than I thought it would be. Page 28 mentions that Hillary has organized and gotten funding (with the help of Soros and others) for several think tanks including the Center for American Progress. The Center has a 501(c)4 designation which permits the propoganda section to be more aggressively partisan.
Sara Wartell, a veteran of the Clinton administration, is the Center's chief operating officer. The Center focuses on hot button issues in Washington with an eye to influencing Congress, the public and the media through a sophisticated rapid response media campaign.
The rapid response media campaign is run by Debbie Berger, the daughter of Sandy Berger! ----82 posted on 08/11/2004 3:46:40 PM PDT by Peach
While his boss was being interviewed by the Sept 11 commission, Sandy Berger stole classified documents from the National Archives by smuggling them in his pants and socks, even deliberately destroyed some of them once he managed to get them to his office. He may also have substituted documents, we may never know.
MARCH 2004 : (THE NOTES OF A PENTAGON AIDE NAMED ERIC - MENTIONING RICHARD CLARKE AND CONTAINING DIRECTIONS TO SECDEF DONALD RUMSFELD'S HOUSE ARE LEFT A STARBUCKS - ARE FOUND AT A COFFEE SHOP AND ARE GIVEN TO THE LIBERAL "CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS," WHICH PUBLISHES THEM INSTEAD OF IMMEDIATELY RETURNING THEM TO WHERE THEY BELONG) ------ "Found at Starbucks: The Pentagon's Papers," American Progress [lefty org], March 31, 2004 unsigned
One of CAP's babies is Media Matters, the group that has been trying to remove Rush Limbaugh from Armed Forces radio.
***I have yet to hear one person say, "When I was asked by the President, 'What do you need?'. I told him MORE TROOPS." I have yet to hear it, because they did not say it.***
Then you haven't been paying attention. Rumsfeld fired Shinseki for saying just that. He was fired.
***I will respect the opinion of a General who resigns in protest of a policy. When they stay until retirement....***
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
Every General Officer I am aware of has been in at least 22 year (and they very few and far between, very rare indeed) IOW, since every General has been in for at least 20 years, every General can retire. Even if the "resign," they retire.
I'm more interested in why these guys want to associate with groups like Halperin's Center for American Progress:
In 1998, Halperin became director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department. During his tenure 15 State Department laptop computers containing highly classified intelligence information disappeared. . .Morton Halperin in February 2002 became Director of the Open Society Policy Center and has worked closely ever since with its creator, eccentric billionaire international financier George Soros, who committed tens of millions of dollars in 2004 to a variety of efforts to defeat President Bush. One of these Soros-funded political efforts is the Center for American Progress (CAP), launched in summer 2003, one of the “Seven Sisters” pillars of the left’s “Shadow Government.” CAP is also known as “the official Hillary Clinton think tank,” described by Horowitz and Poe as “a platform designed to highlight Hillary’s policies and to enhance her prestige as a potential presidential candidate." According to a March 1, 2004 report by Robert Dreyfuss in The Nation, Halperin and Soros handpicked the President of CAP, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta. . .----- Lowell Ponte, "The ABC's of Media Bias"
Halperin is also associated with the Institute on Policy Studies:
Also, in 1969 J. Edgar Hoover suspected Halperin of being responsible for leaking sensitive information on Nixon's bombing of Cambodia to the press (". . .on May 8 1969, New York Times reporter William Beecher wrote that 'according to Nixon administration sources,' American B-52 bombers had raided several Vietcong and North Vietnamese supply dumps and base camps in Cambodia. . .Hoover could not identify the leaker. He could only conjecture as to the source, advising Kissinger. . .that national security aide Morton Halperin could have leaked this information, on the grounds that Halperin 'knew [William] Beecher and that he [Hoover] considered [Halperin] a part of the Harvard clique and, of course, of the Kennedy era'. . .After leaving the NSC staff, Halperin and another wiretapped NSC aide, Anthony Lake, joined the campaign staff of Democratic presidential aspirant Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine. . .Hoover. . .reported on proposed speeches and article's of the administration's critics, about Lake's intention 'to work with Senator Fulbright in opposing the war'. . .": Athan Theoharis and John Stuart Cox, The Boss, 466-8). 105 posted on 04/07/2004 5:35:45 PM PDT by Fedora
JUNE 1971 : (NY TIMES PUBLISHES STOLEN DEFENSE DEPARTMENT DOCUMENTS AS THE "PENTAGON PAPERS" - See MORTON HALPERIN, LESLIE GELB, DANIEL ELLSBURG, LYNDON B JOHNSON) Halperin has a long and controversial track record in the world of Washington intrigue, dating back to the Johnson Administration. Journalists sympathetic to Halperin’s leftwing sentiments give him high marks for blowing the whistle on the Vietnam War, but his activism helped undermine America’s war effort and contributed to the Communist victory.
The Johnson Defense Department placed Halperin in charge of compiling a secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, based on classified documents. This secret history later emerged into public view as the so-called “Pentagon Papers.” Halperin and his deputy Leslie Gelb assigned much of the writing to leftwing opponents of the war, such as Daniel Ellsberg who, despite his background as a former Marine and a military analyst for the Rand Corporation, was already evolving into a New Left radical. In his memoir, Secrets, Ellsberg admits to concluding, as early as 1967, that, “we were not fighting on the wrong side; we were the wrong side” in the Vietnam War. [11] [[11] Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (New York: Viking, 2002) ]
Evidently Ellsberg had come to view Ho Chi Minh’s Communist regime as the wave of the future.
With Halperin’s tacit encouragement – and perhaps active collusion – Ellsberg stole the secret history and released it to The New York Times, which published the documents as “The Pentagon Papers” in June 1971.[12][[12] Ellsberg, Secrets, 2002; Seymour M. Hersh, “Kissinger and Nixon in the White House,” The Atlantic, May 1982 ]
This was a violation of the Espionage Act, which forbids the removal of classified documents from government buildings. Not surprisingly, “The Pentagon Papers” echoed Halperin’s long-standing position that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, and ridiculed Presidents Kennedy and Johnson for stubbornly refusing to heed those of their advisors who shared this opinion. It marked a turning point in America’s failed effort to keep Indo-China from falling to the Communists. The government dropped its case against Ellsberg as Nixon’s power collapsed during the Watergate intrigues. --- "The Shadow Party: Part I," by David Horowitz and Richard Poe, FrontPageMagazine.com, 10/06/04
1970s : (CLINTON, STROBE TALBOT & MORTON HALPERIN ARE ADMITTED ENTRY INTO THE USSR) Bill Clinton-[future] President, Strobe Talbot-[future] Deputy Secretary of State, Morton Halperin- [future] State Director of Policy Planning, were all welcomed into the Soviet Union (when nobody else could get in) back during their Oxford days, and squired around by the KGB. Not exactly my idea of a vacation break from studies--the Soviet Union in the dead of winter. So here begins the sordid story of the destruction of this country by one of it's most popular and hated presidents and his evil anti-American cadre. FULL ARTICLE - "THE EVIL WITHIN: CLINTON'S COMMUNIST CADRE ," by Barbara Stanley , etherzone, 05-11-2000
1984 - 1992 : (MORTON H HALPERIN IS DIRECTOR OF THE ACLU & HEAD OF ITS "NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVES") Halperin went on to become the director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1984 to 1992 and head of its "National Security Archives." From this position, he waged open war against U.S.intelligence services, through the courts and the press, seeking to strip the government of virtually any power to investigate, monitor or obstruct subversive elements and their activities.[13] It did not take long for Halperin to go the next logical step and argue for abolishing America’s intelligence services altogether....--- "The Shadow Party: Part I," by David Horowitz and Richard Poe, FrontPageMagazine.com, 10/06/04
MARCH 21, 1987 : (THE NATION ARTICLE : ACLU's MORTON H. HALPERIN VILLIFIES THE US & CALLS FOR ABOLISHMENT OF US INTELLIGENCE SERVICES) In a March 21, 1987 article in The Nation, Halperin expanded on this theme [arguing for the abolishing of the US's intelligence services] and, like Ellsberg, took the position that America was the real villain in the Cold War. He wrote, “Secrecy does not serve national security. Covert operations are incompatible with constitutional government and should be abolished.”[15] This was a call for unilateral disarming of our intelligence services to match the universal disarmament of our military which has long been a staple of the radical agenda. --- "The Shadow Party: Part I," by David Horowitz and Richard Poe, FrontPageMagazine.com, 10/06/04
FEBRUARY 193 : (CLINTON ANNOUNCES THE APPOINTMENT OF MORTON HALPERIN TO NEW POSITION OF "SECDEF FOR DEMOCRACY & PEACEKEEPING" BUT THE NOMINATION WOULD STALL) In February 1993, President Bill Clinton’s administration announced the appointment of Morton Halperin to the new position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Democracy and Peacekeeping. Halperin withdrew his name from consideration in January 1994, his nomination stalled by both Republican and Democrat U.S. Senators who refused to consent to so radical a nominee. --------
"The ABC's of Media Bias-The radical roots of ABC Political Director Mark Halperin," by Lowell Ponte, FrontPageMagazine.com , 10/14/04
Morton Halperin's son Mark is the political director at ABC...
OCTOBER 8, 2004 : (ABC NETWORK : MARK HALPERIN MEMO) And now ABC News has left in place its Political Director Mark Halperin. ABC has done this despite the network’s acknowledgement that Halperin wrote a memo that to many seems to direct ABC reporters, anchors and producers to slant its coverage by downplaying the misstatements of Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry and by viewing negatively any misstatements by Republican candidate Bush.
Halperin’s directive reached ABC people on October 8, the very day that ABC “Good Morning America” co-host Charlie Gibson would be selecting questions for and moderating the second presidential debate between Bush and Kerry. Did Halperin intend to influence Gibson’s decisions in this debate? ...
...Halperin was for many reasons too controversial to win Senate confirmation. He had advocated unilateral nuclear disarmament of the United States, publication of most U.S. military secrets, and an end of all clandestine activities by the U.S. against the Soviet Union and its colony in Communist Cuba. ------- "The ABC's of Media Bias-The radical roots of ABC Political Director Mark Halperin," by Lowell Ponte, FrontPageMagazine.com, 10/14/04
That may play into this alright.
I also think there are a fair amount of lefty kooks in the upper levels of the services.
D1
Thanks. Glad to hear it.
Wild speculation on your part.
Shineski made the recommendation in February of 2003. Shineski was replaced in August of 2003. That's a half year later.
As Shineski later made clear when he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, it was neither his -- Shineski's -- call nor Rumsfeld's call and that it was General Franks commander of armed forces in the region who had the final say.
BTW, one unnamed source in the Village Voice said this about Shineski and his comments: bullshit from a Clintonite enamoured of using the army for peacekeeping and not winning wars.
Please don't cite Shineski.
bttt
This is just sour grapes from former military folks who could not brown nose there way around Rumsfeld. He is too smart for that. All of these folks are suffering from the "Wesley Clark Syndrome". Clark started out to praise Bush until it was clear his brown nose routine would not get him a position in the Bush Administration. Then he became a DEM and trashed the War. Clark is a useless scumbag.
You beg two questions (1)how often does a team start winning after sacking the coach?and (2) In what way is he sacrificing the team. If you look at Afghanistan, you will find the situation there as problematical as that of Iraq. What his critics really want to to go back to the failed "containment" policy of 1991-2003, while building big weapons system to take on China, the "real" enemy of the United States. As Rumsfeld said to the Tennessee guardsmen, you go to war with what you got, and what we had were Germans trained to think in terms of large conventional forces, including crusader artillery that would be great for WWI and a fleet of apache helicopters who withered in the heat of battle like the French cavalry at Crecy. Rumsfeld reminds me of a better tempered version of an earlier secretary of war, Edwin Stanton. The generals hated that guy, too, but at least the Union Army was loyal to the President. These bastards are not.
B.S.!!! If these low life were loyal to their troops and the USA, their careers would have not mattered. IMHO, they should court martialed, and sent to jail for treason for not voicing their thoughts two and three years ago. By the way, these fools are not even going to get close to touching Rumsfeld. End of story!!!
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