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Former President Ford said Friday he is troubled by the efforts of retired generals to force the ouster of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Ford, who appointed Rumsfeld as his White House chief of staff and then chose him to be defense secretary during his administration, said in a statement that President Bush was right to keep Rumsfeld in his post. The statement was released by spokeswoman Penny Circle as Bush arrived in California for the weekend. Ford, 92, said the decision on keeping Rumsfeld is the president's alone. "Allowing retired generals to dictate our country's policies and its leadership...

In just two weeks, six retired U.S. Marine and Army generals have denounced the Pentagon planning for the war in Iraq and called for the resignation or firing of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who travels often to Iraq and supports the war, says that the generals mirror the views of 75 percent of the officers in the field, and probably more. This is not a Cindy Sheehan moment. This is a vote of no confidence in the leadership of the U.S. armed forces by senior officers once responsible for carrying out the orders of...

Last time around, the antiwar left did not have a very high opinion of generals. A popular slogan in the 1960s was "war is too important to be left to the generals." It was the generals who had advocated attacking Cuba during the missile crisis of October 1962, while the civilians preferred -- and got -- a diplomatic solution. In popular culture, "Dr. Strangelove" made indelible the caricature of the war-crazed general. And it was I-know-better generals who took over the U.S. government in a coup in the 1960s bestseller and movie "Seven Days in May." Another war, another take....

The US top brass are ducking their responsibilities - and beleaguered Donald Rumsfeld is just doing his job WHO WILL be the Admiral Byng of the Iraq conflict — the symbolic victim executed for the alleged failures of the war? That is what the current “revolt of the generals” against Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, is about. It is the ruthless Washingtonian version of “pass the parcel”. Much of the military brass feels that it carried the can for the civilian leadership’s errors in Vietnam and is determined never to do so again. General Anthony Zinni — the former...

LONDON (AFP) - A senior British military officer, who worked in Baghdad in 2004, believes US generals try to act like gung-ho movie stars such as John Wayne, a newspaper reported. Brigadier Alan Sharp made the comments in an academic report on Britain's influence on US foreign relations, The Daily Telegraph said. The 46-year-old, who worked alongside the US military in Baghdad, said there was a "strong streak of Hollywood" among American officers. He said an important part to being a success in the US army was the ability to combine the "real and acted heroics" of Audie Murphy, a...

Here's a special "Political Tidbits" post about those armchair generals. For all is not as it would appear on the surface. A lesson in common sense and the baggage so many of them carry.

WASHINGTON, April 17, 2006 – Recent criticism voiced by a half dozen retired generals over Iraq war planning does not reflect the mainstream views of the officer corps, a senior Defense Department official told Pentagon reporters today. "There are a handful of officers that have exercised their right to speak their mind, and certainly that's their right to do that," DoD spokesman Bryan Whitman said. Brushing aside a reporter's suggestion there's widespread disagreement among senior officers over Iraq war planning, Whitman said there are thousands of active duty, reserve component and retired general officers from all of the armed services....

“Men of strenuous minds and high ideals come forward.... The attacks they sustain are more cruel than the collision of arms.... Friends desert and despise them.... They stand alone....” --Woodrow Wilson Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is a strong personality, tasked (among other things greater and lesser) with managing a puzzle palace full of strong personalities and huge egos. ‘No plan survives first contact.’ And hindsight is always 20/20. Currently an excrement storm is swirling around the SecDef as a few retired General officers are grousing that their former boss should be pink slipped. President Bush is standing fast with...

There is a great furor over whether the opinions of a number of retired high-ranking officers should tip the balance in the ongoing debate over the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But the question really isn't whether Rumsfeld should resign. He has already resigned several times and had President Bush tear up his letters of resignation. He clearly is taking responsibility for his actions on a continuing basis. But now that a galaxy of flag officers are raining down on Rumsfeld demanding his resignation, no one seems to have bothered to ask which, if any, of these generals had...

Another two US generals have weighed into the row over whether Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should quit. Ex-Nato commander Gen Wesley Clark, who ran for the Democrat presidential nomination in 2004, backed calls for Mr Rumsfeld to resign. But ex-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Richard Myers, said the calls were inappropriate. Six retired generals have recently spoken out against Mr Rumsfeld's handling of the war in Iraq. But President George W Bush has assured Mr Rumsfeld of his "full support" and rejected calls for him to step down. Frequent critic Gen Clark said in a television interview:...

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers appeared on Weekend Live with Tony Snow, where he said that the current situation of retired generals critiquing their civilian superiors is "fundamentally dangerous" and "inappropriate." Myers said that he has respect for the 6 former generals who have recently criticized Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, but he cannot figure out what the motivation is for them coming out now. While Myers said he wouldn't go so far as to call it "unethical," he made it clear that it was not "healthy" or appropriate for the military or the country.

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Feb. 2, 2006) -- In a rare letter co-signed by the the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior military leaders of the United States objected to a political cartoon published in the Jan. 29 issue of the Washington Post. Led by Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and signed by the vice chief and the senior officers of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, the letter addressed what the leaders agreed was a “callous” cartoon. Editorial cartoonist Tome Toles depicted the U.S. Army as a quadruple amputee, attended to by...

On Wednesday night, October 26th, college students across the nation participated in various anti-war protests or, as many of them referred to it, vigils commemorating the 2,000 military deaths in Iraq. These so called “vigils” included much more than candles and Kumbaya.

The nationalists want to make a deal with the Americans, while al Qaeda wants to fight on, the UN official told Tavernise. When the bad guys are shooting each other, it's hard to say the insurgency is worsening, but Democrats are escalating their rhetoric: Iraq is "a seemingly intractable quagmire," said Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) at a contentious hearing Thursday. Disaster in Iraq "is a real possibility," said Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del) after announcing his intention to run for president. "There is rising concern that everything seems to be going the wrong way," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, (D-Cal). People who've...

We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail! Good morning!! Do not let the victims of the attacks on New York and Washington, nor the brave members of our Nation's military who have given their lives to protect our freedom, die in vain!! THE LAST SYRIAN TROOPS WITHDRAW FROM LEBANON. Even though he escaped, American troops managed to recover a computer owned by Zarqawi said to have "a very big hard drive" according to officials, and have traced the terrorist fugitive to Ramadi, Iraq. President Putin of Russia called the collapse of the Soviet Union...

<p>BAGHDAD — U.S. and Iraqi forces captured more than 100 insurgency suspects in raids across the country, arresting a former Iraqi general and another Iraqi thought involved in a suicide bombing last month, the U.S. command said yesterday.</p> <p>Insurgents lobbed a mortar shell at a checkpoint near the airport in Baghdad yesterday, killing a U.S. soldier and wounding another, the command said.</p>

Japanese Official Warns of Fissures in North Korea(130 generals defected?) Japanese Official Warns of Fissures in North Korea By JAMES BROOKE Published: November 22, 2004 OKYO, Nov. 21 - After weeks of reports from North Korea of defecting generals, antigovernment posters and the disappearance of portraits of the country's ruler, the leader of Japan's governing party warned Sunday of the prospects of "regime change" in North Korea. "As long as Chairman Kim Jong Il controls the government, we have to negotiate with him, but it is becoming more doubtful whether we will be able to achieve anything with this government,"...

In the nineteen months since the war in Iraq began, some of the most outspoken critics of President Bush's plan of attack have come from a group that should have been the most supportive: retired senior military leaders. We spoke with a group of generals and admirals that included a former supreme Allied commander and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and they all agreed on one thing: Bush screwed up. Gen. Merrill "Tony" McPeak, Air Force chief of staff, 1990-94 We have a force in Iraq that's much too small to stabilize the situation. It's about half the...

John A. Shaw, deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said this week that two European intelligence services have obtained documentary evidence indicating Russian spetsnaz, or special forces, troops were involved in a covert program to shred documents on Russian arms sales to Iraq, and to move weapons out of the country to Syria, Lebanon and possibly Iran. The Russians were hired by the Iraqis to protect special Russian weapons and to organize the removal of arms through truck convoys. The Russian special forces troops were working for the GRU military intelligence service and wore civilian clothes, defense officials...