Without the reason for dismissal this doesn’t carry much weight.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, who was with Delta Force and later Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence under President George W. Bush, says it is worrying that four-star generals are being retired at the rate that has occurred under Obama.
“Over the past three years, it is unprecedented for the number of four-star generals to be relieved of duty, and not necessarily relieved for cause,” Boykin said.
“I believe there is a purging of the military,” he said. “The problem is worse than we have ever seen.”
It would also be useful to compare Obama's dismissal numbers with Bush's.
I think I recognize a couple of those, fired for scandals. The AF 2 star in charge of the ICBM’s for the cheating scandal for one.
Maddog, you are certainly correct. The list would be quite telling if it were limited to those reasonably thought to have been relieved for political considerations. Many would not hesitate to place LTCOL Terrance Lakin's name at the top of such a list.
Obama is just finding ways to get rid of them so he can put in people loyal to him who will be more than happy to fire on Americans.
Jack, throughout our past 150 years your statement normally would have been taken as ludicrous - but not today. Our nation is indeed in a struggle for its soul.
I know at least one of the Navy guys personally and he retired, was pretty happy about it too. So I concur that we need to know the reasons, I’m sure a closer examination will show some poor conduct, groundings, etc.
In addition, we have more generals and admirals then we had in WWII, so some of it could be related to draw down and position combinations. Look at the ratio of admirals to ships as a solid indicator of how top heavy we are.
That being said I’d still like to see side by side comparisons with prior admins on the 1-4 stars, as I just don’t trust anyone anymore.