Generals call for Rumsfeld to resign

" Three years after the fall of Baghdad and the city's disastrous plunge into chaos, US military brass appears engaged in a new campaign: getting rid of Pentagon chief 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 on Apr. 12 when Maj. Gen. 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 three 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 discrediting 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. 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' 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 generals' unease with Rumsfeld's plans for going to war date originally from his summary dismissal in early 2003 of then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. 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 candor, was taken by most of the brass 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, ret. 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 Mar. 19, ret. 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 ret. 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..." "My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions–or bury the results," he asserted, calling for the replacement of Rumsfeld "and many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach." With his remarks, Batiste, who retired from the Army in November and whose forces were based in Tikrit until last May, joined the rebellion, firmly taking Zinni's side. "...When decisions are made without taking into account sound military recommendations, sound military decision making, sound planning, then we're bound to make mistakes," he said. "You know, it speaks volumes that guys like me are speaking out from retirement about the leadership climate in the Department of Defense." Call goes out for top brass to back Rumsfeld The Bush administration's attempts to rebut criticism of Rumsfeld turned up a notch on Apr. 16 with the publication of a Pentagon memo seeking to persuade former military commanders to back him. The one-page memo, emailed on Apr. 14 to a large group of retired officers and civilian experts, took the unusual step of enumerating the Pentagon chief's recent meetings in order to prove "US senior military leaders are involved to an unprecedented degree in every decision-making process in the department of defense." It also sought to play down the importance of the ex-generals who have called for Rumsfeld's resignation, noting there are 8,000 current and former US generals alive. The secretary had had 139 meetings with the joint chiefs of staff since 2005, the memo said, along with 208 meetings with other senior field commanders. The Pentagon called the document a "fact sheet," and denied trying to recruit other retired personnel to the defense secretary's cause. On Apr. 15 Wesley Clark became the seventh ex-commander calling for Rumsfeld to go.