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First, if there is a rebellion of any active duty General, this writer has not heard about it, but if one believes the media, Generals are in full-scale revolt. As Colonel Sherman T. Potter of MASH fame said, “horse pucky.” Of course there are disagreements, and should be. On the other hand, if there was an actual rebellion, “Houston, we have a problem.” Second, disagreement is the fire that refines arguments and thinking. The decibel level may vary, but in the end, after the arguments have been heard, active duty Generals have a UCMJ and Constitutional obligation to “keep silent.”...

A critical element of the “General’s Revolt” that has not received enough attention is the involvement of the Center for Defense Information (CDI). The CDI is a Washington-based advocacy group that, like the Institute of Policy Studies or the National Resources Defense Council, is usually described with a bland, harmless-sounding tagline that hides more than it reveals. The CDI claims to be an organization making available continuing, objective information and analyses of our national defense when in fact for the past three decades it has been the Left’s point organization for attacking military and defense policy. The CDI was founded...

General Anthony Zinni, recently retired Pentagon Chief for Middle East operations defended his original decision to use Aden as a refueling port and the desirability of bringing Yemen closer to American interests. General Zinni told the New York Times that several ship visits had been vetoed by the American Ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, who worried about the threat of terrorism.

WASHINGTON - Everyone is saying that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s days are numbered, thanks in part to increasing calls by some former generals for Rumsfeld’s resignation. But Rumsfeld was hired by George W. Bush to do precisely what he has done to the consternation of the generals who are now coming out to complain about him. When President Bush brought Rumsfeld back to the Pentagon, the president told him to shake up the Pentagon, to transform it from the Cold War structure and culture that it was stuck in to a new force with strategies that could respond to...

Once on fast track to be captain, Kirk Lippold now works at a desk. Last in a two-part series. WASHINGTON -- For 5½ years, the Washington military and political establishment has not known quite what to do with Kirk Lippold. Cmdr. Lippold was the skipper of the USS Cole when al-Qaida terrorists committed a suicide bombing in the Yemen port of Aden on Oct. 12, 2000. The attack, from a small barge that pulled alongside the Cole, blew a 40-by-40-foot hole in the guided-missile destroyer. Seventeen sailors died and 42 were wounded. After he led an intense three-week effort to...

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Tuesday, April 18, 2006 12:09 p.m. EDTGen. Anthony Zinni: USS Cole Blunder Is My Fault Former CENTCOM Commander, Gen. Anthony Zinni - who has called for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign because of Rumsfeld's alleged incompetence in running the Iraq war - admitted six years ago that he made the disastrous decision to have the USS Cole use the port of Aden, Yemen for refueling, where the ship was blown up by al-Qaida terrorists. Worse still, at least one report indicates that Gen. Zinni may have played a role in an August 1998 leak that tipped...

I joined the Marines in 1961, so it's been 39 years. My retirement date is 1 September, but I plan to step down and go on terminal leave in July. I'd like to talk about who we were--the military generations who went through the past four decades, from the 1960s up to the new millennium. If you looked at a snapshot taken when I first came into the service, all the generals looked the same--older white males with Anglo-Saxon names and Southern drawls--despite the fact that the troops they led came from lots of different places. Let's just say that...

Former CENTCOM Commander, Gen. Anthony Zinni - who has called for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign because of his alleged incompetence in running the Iraq war - admitted six years ago that he made the disastrous decision to have the U.S.S. Cole use the port of Aden, Yemen for refueling, where the ship was blown up by al Qaeda terrorists. Worse still, at least one report indicates that Gen. Zinni may have played a role in an August 1998 leak that tipped off Osama bin Laden to an impending U.S. cruise missile attack - allowing the top terrorist to...

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine: Former Clinton CENTCOM commander, Anthony Zinni — the most prominent of the retired generals attacking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — now says that, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, "What bothered me ... [was that] I was hearing a depiction of the intelligence that didn't fit what I knew. There was no solid proof, that I ever saw, that Saddam had WMD." But in early 2000, Zinni told Congress ...

A few months back, leftist Jewish critics, such as Frank Rich, Abraham Foxman and Leon Wieseltier, trashed Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ, for what they called its blatant anti-Semitism, warning of the danger the movie could create for Jews wherever the movie was shown. So far, 50 million people have seen the movie in America, and nobody has been seen running out of a cineplex calling for Jewish blood. They are yelling for Jewish blood however, in many countries around the world, especially Muslims leaving their mosques after furious incitement by their Wahhabi-trained imams. On this subject,...

“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...

by Mark Finkelstein April 15, 2006 Different day, different Today show anchor, different attitude. As we documented here yesterday, when Katie Couric hosted a segment on the matter of the retired generals calling for Donald Rumsfeld's ouster, she chose as her guest one of the generals calling for Rumsfeld's head. Her most notable contributions to the discussion were to invite her guest to take a shot at Pres. Bush as long as he was at it, and to ask why he didn't come out sooner with his criticism so he could have 'shaped public opinion far earlier.' This morning it...

Retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, who now complains that President Bush cherry-picked pre-war Iraq weapons intelligence and misled the country into going to war, warned six years ago that Saddam Hussein's WMD program was the biggest threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East. "Iraq remains the most significant near-term threat to U.S. interests in the Arabian Gulf region," Zinni told Congress on March 15, 2000. "Despite claims that WMD efforts have ceased," the general-turned-war critic said, "Iraq probably is continuing clandestine nuclear research, retains stocks of chemical and biological munitions, and is concealing extended-range SCUD missiles, possibly equipped with CBW...

WASHINGTON – Crusty and unapologetic, Donald H. Rumsfeld is the public face of an unpopular war and a target of unrelenting criticism. A growing number of commanders who served under him say he has botched the Iraq operation, ignored the advice of his generals and should be replaced. The White House insists the defense secretary retains President Bush's confidence. Few close to the administration expect him to be shown the door. “The president believes Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a very fine job during a challenging period in our nation's history,” Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said Thursday as the administration circled...

WASHINGTON For the second time in two weeks, a former general has called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over what both generals described as serious mistakes made in the war in Iraq. In remarks Sunday on NBC, General Anthony Zinni of the U.S. Marine Corps, a former commander of the Central Command who retired in 2000, said that Rumsfeld, among others, should be held accountable for tactical mistakes in Iraq. Asked who should resign, Zinni said, "Secretary of defense, to begin with," adding that resignations should also come from others responsible for planning the war effort and...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A former senior US military commander, Anthony Zinni, called for the dismissal of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over critical mistakes made in the Iraq war. Zinni, who headed the US Central Command from 1997 to 2000, was asked if anyone should lose their job over how Washington has managed its Iraq policy. "Secretary of defense to begin with," he told NBC's "Meet the Press" program. "Integrity and getting on with the mission and doing it right is more important than loyalty. Both are great traits, but integrity, honesty and performance and competence have to outweigh, in this...

MEET THE PRESS 4/2/2006... Gen. Tony Zinni (Ret.), the former Commander of U.S. Central Command, has written a new book: "The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose." He calls the war in Iraq "ill-conceived" with "no end in sight" and outlines his strategy for "repairing America's international relations and Washington's response to domestic and foreign crises." "Meet the Press" has the exclusive first interview. Description THE BATTLE FOR PEACE Tony Zinni has served on the frontlines of war and peace--as a Marine in Vietnam, commander of troops in the Middle East, and diplomatic envoy. His...

The Talk Shows Sunday, April 2nd, 2006 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Philip Mudd, associate executive assistant director of the FBI's National Security Branch.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.; retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni. FACE THE NATION (CBS): Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. THIS WEEK (ABC): Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and George Allen, R-Va.; Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins. LATE EDITION (CNN) : Mexican President Vicente Fox; Sens. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Evan Bayh,...

Likewise, he says, the goal of transforming the Middle East by imposing democracy by force reminds him of the "domino theory" in the 1960s that the United States had to win in Vietnam to prevent the rest of Southeast Asia from falling into communist hands. ******************************************* Feel free to post others, how wrong he is.

The airplane is a Gulfstream V turbojet, the sort favored by CEOs and celebrities. But since 2001 it has been seen at military airports from Pakistan to Indonesia to Jordan, sometimes being boarded by hooded and handcuffed passengers....In this case, the agency is flying captured terrorist suspects from one country to another for detention and interrogation....