Posted on 06/10/2003 9:30:02 PM PDT by GodfearingTexan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In an unorthodox step, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has picked a general who retired three years ago to return to duty and become the Army's new chief of staff, senior defense officials said on Tuesday.
The officials said Rumsfeld asked President Bush (news - web sites) to nominate retired four-star Army Gen. Peter Schoomaker, 57, who previously headed elite U.S. Special Operations forces, to succeed retiring Gen. Eric Shinseki as the Army's top officer.
Shinseki departs on Wednesday. Rumsfeld's choice of a retiree to vault past top active Army generals to head the service and become a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff comes against a backdrop of strained relations between Rumsfeld and the Army.
Two other top Army generals, including Tommy Franks who was architect of the Iraq (news - web sites) war plan, have turned down Rumsfeld invitations to take the job.
One official said Rumsfeld had sent the Schoomaker recommendation to the White House on Tuesday.
Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur was summoned out of military retirement in 1941 to head all allied forces in the Southwest Pacific in World War II.
But Army historians said they knew of no previous case in which an officer was summoned out of retirement to serve as Army chief of staff. They said seven men had served as Army senior officer or commanding general after earlier retiring from the military, but none since the Civil War.
One was George Washington, who served as senior officer of the Army in 1798 and 1799 after serving as the first U.S. president.
"This situation is essentially without precedent," said defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute.
Rumsfeld is not reluctant to challenge precedent and is a strong proponent of relying on special forces -- small groups of elite, highly trained soldiers -- to take on tasks that previously might have required thousands of troops.
Such units played major roles in the Iraq war and in the Afghanistan (news - web sites) war before it.
Shinseki publicly opposed Rumsfeld's decision last year to cancel the Army's $11 billion "Crusader" artillery gun program. Rumsfeld and other top civilian defense officials also disputed Shinseki's prewar assessment that several hundred thousand U.S. troops would be needed to stabilize and occupy postwar Iraq.
Rumsfeld in April forced the resignation of Thomas White as the Army's top civilian and replaced him with Air Force Secretary James Roche.
Thompson said Rumsfeld was pressing for a massive Army reorganization, noting that selecting an Air Force secretary to run the Army was "unheard of."
"The Rumsfeld plan for the Army envisions a wholesale change in culture, a reorganization of basic combat units, and a rewrite of strategy. Change doesn't get more fundamental than that," he said.
The Senate must confirm whoever is nominated as Army chief of staff.
Schoomaker, a Michigan native and graduate of the University of Wyoming, became commander in chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida in 1997, overseeing all special operations forces of the Army, Navy and Air Force. He retired after a 31-year Army career in 2000.
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