Free Republic

AS the No. 2 general at United States Central Command from the Sept. 11 attacks through the Iraq war, I was the daily "answer man" to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. I briefed him twice a day; few people had as much interaction with him as I did during those two years. In light of the recent calls for his resignation by several retired generals, I would like to set the record straight on what he was really like to work with. When I was at Centcom, the people who needed to have access to Secretary Rumsfeld got it, and he...

excerpt M. O'BRIEN: And then he(Batiste) went on to say he thinks Secretary Rumsfeld should step down. What do you say to that? DELONG: ... Dealing with Secretary Rumsfeld is like dealing with a CEO. When you walk in to him, you've got to be prepared. You've got to (know) what you're talking about. If you don't, you're summarily dismissed, but that's the way it is, and he's effective. excerpt M. O'BRIEN: General, to sum it up. If I had to sum up the criticism it seems to me what people are saying is there's an arrogance and almost a...

Sunday, Sept. 26, 2004 4:03 p.m. EDT Ex-CENTCOM No. 2: Intel Showed Iraq Smuggled Out WMDs Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong, who until last September was the number two in command of the Iraq war under Gen. Tommy Franks, revealed Sunday that U.S. military intelligence had determined that weapons of mass destruction were being smuggled out of the country as the U.S. prepared to invade. "I do know for a fact that some of those weapons went into Syria, Lebanon and Iran," Gen. DeLong told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg, while discussing his new book, "Inside CENTCOM: The Unvarnished Truth About the...

As John Kerry tells it, Tora Bora is the place where President Bush let Osama bin Laden get away.... Well, that's not the way the battle's commanders remember it. The Afghanistan war was led by Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. Central Command, and his deputy, Lt. Gen. Michael "Rifle" DeLong.... To them, Mr. Kerry's version of the battle of Tora Bora is revisionist history. ...Gen. Franks, on the campaign... for George W. Bush,... said it's wrong to assume that bin Laden was hiding out in Tora Bora. Some intelligence reports put him there, he says, but others placed him...