posted on November 4, 2006 09:15:43 PM new
Army Times Says 'Rumsfeld Must Go'
WASHINGTON (Nov. 4) - There are more voices calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to get the ax.
An Army Times editorial due to be published Monday says Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the military's uniformed leadership and with troops.
The Military Times Media Group, a Gannett Co. subsidiary that publishes Army Times and other military-oriented periodicals, said Friday it was calling for Bush to fire Rumsfeld.
An editorial due to be published Monday says active-duty military leaders are beginning to voice misgivings about the war's planning and execution and dimming prospects for success. It declares that "Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large."
The editorial concludes by saying that regardless of which party wins in next week's election, the time has come "to face the hard bruising truth: Donald Rumsfeld must go."
Meanwhile, a leading conservative proponent of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq now says dysfunction within the Bush administration has turned U.S. policy there into a disaster.
Richard Perle, who chaired a committee of Pentagon policy advisers early in the Bush administration, said had he seen at the start of the war in 2003 where it would go, he probably would not have advocated an invasion to depose Saddam Hussein. Perle was an assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan.
"I probably would have said, 'Let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists,'" he told Vanity Fair magazine in its upcoming January issue.
When asked about the Vanity Fair article and Perle's criticism, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, "We appreciate the Monday-morning quarterbacking, but the president has a plan to succeed in Iraq and we are going forward with it."
Other prominent conservatives criticized the administration's conduct of the war in the article, including Kenneth Adelman, who also served on the Defense Policy Board that informally advised President Bush. Adelman said he was "crushed" by the performance of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
The critiques in Vanity Fair come as growing numbers of Republicans have criticized Bush's policies on Iraq. The war, unpopular with many Americans, has become a top-tier issue in next week's congressional elections.
Perle said "you have to hold the president responsible" because he didn't recognize "disloyalty" by some in the administration. He said the White House's National Security Council, then run by now-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, did not serve Bush properly.
A year before the war, Adelman predicted demolishing Saddam's military power and liberating Iraq would be a "cakewalk." But he told the magazine he was mistaken in his high opinion of Bush's national security .
"They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era," he said. "Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."
posted on November 6, 2006 09:46:23 AM new
Behind the call for Rumsfeld's head
Military Times editor accused of 'treason' at Stars & Stripes
Posted: November 5, 2006
9:17 p.m. Eastern
WASHINGTON – It makes for powerful imagery – an editorial appearing in the Army Times, the Navy Times, the Marine Times and the Air Force Times calling for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Many assume these publications are official or semi-official periodicals of the military branches, while they are actually under the same ownership as USA Today and under the management of an editor who has had his share of run-ins with the U.S. military in the past.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said the president has shrugged off an editorial by the Military Times Media Group to fire Rumsfeld. Bush feels it is merely "grandstanding," he added. The editorial says Rumsfeld has "lost credibility" with top officers.
Snow called the editorial "a caricature" and a "shabby piece of work" filled with inaccuracies. He said it implied the administration's made nothing but "rosy" predictions about Iraq. Snow said that isn't true, leading the president to "shrug it off."
Shortly after Gannett bought the papers in 1997, the media giant installed as editor Robert Hodierne. He is best known for teaming up in 1969 with then-Associated Press reporter Peter Arnett in Vietnam to bring attention to a small group of American soldiers who refused to fight.
As he tells the story himself: "During that late August battle, A.P. reporter Peter Arnett and photographer Horst Faas filed a story about five G.I.s who, for a brief time, refused to fight. A few days later I arrived at the battle to write stories and shoot photos for Pacific Stars & Stripes.
"The story and photos that follow enraged the top brass in the Army. Its chief spokesman, Col. James Campbell, calling Stripes 'the Hanoi Herald,' said my writing gave aid and comfort to the enemy, adding, 'such stories do not border on treason, they are treason.'"
The editorials were timed to come out in all four publications simultaneously today – the final Sunday before the midterm congressional elections.
posted on November 6, 2006 10:04:22 AM new
Oh bear.....it was SO much better while they were showing everyone just how clueless they are.
They BOTH missed that a thread was already addressing this subject....AND they both misunderstood who wrote it. LOL
I had already pointed it out to the in the FIRST thread on this subject.
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Clueless is how MOST dem voters are. Rarely aware of what's going on around them...but so quick to HOPE our military doesn't support their own mission. lol
While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation:
What would a Democrat president have done at that point? Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack.
Ann Coulter
