Free Republic

Summary: Did the Bush administration disregard military expertise before the Iraq war? Should military leaders have done more to protest in response? Michael Desch's "Bush and the Generals" (May/June 2007) contains significant errors of fact and interpretation. One of us, Richard Myers, has direct knowledge and personal experience with the subject; the other, Richard Kohn, has been studying and observing American civil-military relations for 45 years. Bush administration officials did not, as Desch charges, "overrule" the military "on the number of troops to be sent" to Iraq or "the timing of ... deployment." Both were the result of over a...

WIESBADEN, Germany — Hundreds of troops in Wiesbaden didn’t report to work Monday morning, but instead yucked it up with Gen. Richard B. Myers in a hangar at the Army airfield. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers re-enlists 10 soldiers at a ceremony at Wiesbaden Army Airfield, Germany on Monday morning. Myers, along with NFL great Gale Sayers, comedians Jeff Ross and Colin Quinn and model Leeann Tweeden, is visiting troops on a 10-day, 10-country trip. Picture by Michael Abrams / S&S The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff brought along a...

<p>For all the ink and broadcast time expended to air the bickering between the Pentagon leadership and commentators over the war plan for Iraq, some of the most important comments have received far too little attention. We have in mind the informed view of Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.</p>

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the nation's highest-ranking military officer, denounced critics of the campaign in Iraq today, declaring that complaints about the handling of the war were misinformed, inaccurate and harmful to American forces in combat. In perhaps the most dramatic Pentagon news conference in 17 months of briefings on terrorism and war, General Myers rapped on the lectern with a clenched fist and angrily mocked criticism from retired generals and others analyzing the war on television as "great sport here inside the Beltway." But he reserved his harshest judgments for members of the...