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[bradclark1]

[August]

[bradclark1]

Go right ahead. A career military NCO isn't good enough for you? :hulk:

[August]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110008284

Rage at Don
The war on Rumsfeld is really a bureaucratic turf battle.

BY BRENDAN MINITER
Tuesday, April 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

"I think Director [of National Intelligence John] Negroponte has battles to fight within the bureaucracy, and particularly with the Department of Defense. DOD is refusing to recognize that the director of national intelligence is in charge of the intelligence community."--Sen. Susan Collins

On Sept. 10, 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld held a town hall meeting at the Pentagon and identified what he saw as the gravest threat to national security: the Pentagon's own bureaucracy. "With brutal consistency, it stifles free thought and crushes new ideas. It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk," he said. He may have underestimated both the size and tenacity of this foe.

In the opening pages of their new book about the Iraq war, "Cobra II," Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor quote the Sept. 10 speech to frame the battle that has raged inside the Pentagon for five years. As the nation has weathered the most deadly terrorist attack on its soil in history, fought a global war on terror and liberated two countries, there has been a battle inside the Pentagon over the size, organization and weaponry of the U.S. military. And that battle has only intensified as the bureaucracy that Mr. Rumsfeld chastised for being stuck in a Cold War mindset has picked up allies in Congress, the military and in some quarters of the administration. It is this coalition that is now pushing for Mr. Rumsfeld to be fired.

But it's not just the defense secretary's head the former generals, anonymous leakers and senators are after. This is a classic Washington turf and policy war. In the balance is the nation's ability to fight the war on terror and confront other threats around the globe. One of the more significant theaters of this war has been waged in the intelligence community. Two years ago at the behest of the 9/11 Commission, Congress created the director of national intelligence to sit atop the CIA, FBI and other intelligence gathering agencies. In theory the DNI would improve the nation's ability to collect, analyze and disseminate information about national security threats. In this process Congress was cheered on by the Bush administration's normal critics in the media.

Initially the Bush administration resisted creating the new post, but as the 2004 presidential election approached Mr. Bush came out in support of it. A few members of Congress, however, put the breaks on for a few weeks. They included Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, a relatively new arrival on Capitol Hill, who as a former Marine helicopter pilot had seen the need for good intelligence firsthand while carrying the "nuclear football" for President Reagan and while serving in Somalia in the 1990s. Before the legislation creating the new layer of bureaucracy was sent to the president to be signed into law shortly after the election, these few holdouts in the House won a critical battle for the military. They ensured that the Pentagon would not lose its ability to gather and analyze intelligence independently to support soldiers in harms way.

That victory, however, always depended on vigorous civilian control over a Pentagon that would rather not make enemies on Capitol Hill. That leadership starts with the defense secretary and also requires support from a president who understands that it's vital for the Pentagon to control its own intelligence assets. Sen. Collins, who led the fight in Congress against Reps. Hunter and Kline, has never accepted the powerful but limited role for the DNI. Instead she has continued to insist that Mr. Negroponte push to expand his mandate and gain total dominance over the intelligence community. This has come even as the New York Times and Washington Post have printed articles recently pointing out that the DNI has turned out to be--surprise, surprise--ineffective at creating more-accurate intelligence or even in turning out competing analysis that then filters up to policy makers. If anything, the creation of the DNI has made it less likely that members of Congress will receive anything but a consensus view from the intelligence community.

A recent House Intelligence Committee report puts its finger on the problem by saying the DNI is in danger of becoming "less an intended 'orchestration mechanism,' and more another layer of large, unintended and unnecessary bureaucracy." The committee is threatening to cut Mr. Negroponte's funding unless he comes up with a plan for reforming the intelligence community. But short of abolishing his own position, it's hard to see how that is possible.

It is in this context that we can view the criticism of Mr. Rumsfeld intensifying over the past year. The underlying theme from the handful of retired generals who have spoken out against the defense secretary to the critics on Capitol Hill and elsewhere is that Mr. Rumsfeld has been too forceful a leader at the Pentagon. Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, wants to go so far as to hold a symbolic "no-confidence vote" on the defense secretary. "Let the Senate go on the record," he told reporters last week.

Unable to persuade the president from invading Iraq or to stop him from pushing for a more flexible military with an expanded role around the world, it seems the critics are now trying to throw sand in the gears of the military machine in the hope that it will grind to a halt. It's hard to see how this serves the national interest.

Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays.

[corvette k225]

So what six or eight, what about the other 1,800, what are they saying?

just a some old Clinton hold overs.

[August]

http://www.examiner.com/a-88357~Jed_Babbin__Keep_the_Big_Dog_running.html

Jed Babbin: Keep the Big Dog running

PDF | Email
Jed Babbin, The Examiner
Apr 25, 2006 7:00 AM (4 hrs ago)
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 the post-Cold War world.

Months before Sept. 11, as Rumsfeld began the transformation of the Pentagon, he ran into contumacious obstructionism from the army and its then-Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki. Shinseki dug his heels in and refused to change much of anything about the Army. Shinseki went as far as to go behind Rumsfeld’s back to the Senate where his political mentor (and long-time family friend, Sen. Dan Inouye of Hawaii) and others backed his play.

But for the political cover Sen. Inouye gave Shinseki, he might have been fired then and there. Civilian control of the military means people such as Shinseki cannot be allowed to play the back-channel political games he played again and again. Shinseki stayed, and the Army went on to spend billions on the Stryker armored vehicle, a Cold War style peacekeeping vehicle that is too big and too heavy to be moved by a C-130 tactical airlifter without being partially disassembled.

And then came Sept. 11. The Secretary of Defense became the secretary of war and the transformation he had brought to the Pentagon had to be continued under fire. Still, the Army resisted.

Shinseki balked at striking at the Taliban. For the record, our forces slashed into the Taliban around Oct. 5, 2001, less than a month after Sept 11. But — aside from Rangers and Army Special Forces — the Army stayed home. Shinseki wanted at least six months to assemble and move an enormous Soviet-like force into Afghanistan and the president wasn’t having any of it. This is why Shinseki retired in 2003 with a festering grudge against Rumsfeld.

And then Rumsfeld did the unthinkable. Instead of replacing Shinseki with one of his like-minded underlings, Rumsfeld looked for someone who would fight. Gen. Peter Schoomaker, a Special Forces vet, was brought out of retirement to transform the Army in the middle of a war. And he did it. But in the process Rumsfeld, Schoomaker and his team shook up a lot of people.

Of the six who have called for Rumsfeld’s firing, all came to rank and prestige in the Clinton days, what some Pentagon wags now call the “Great Period of Neglect.” It was the era of “Blackhawk Down,” of Shinseki ordering the army to wear black berets and buying them from China and of Gen. Anthony Zinni, then commander of CENTCOM, becoming addicted to “stability” in the Middle East, entranced by the Arab leaders he’d come to know well. Stability meant leaving Saddam alone, so Zinni spoke often against the Iraq war before it began. Stability now means leaving Iran to pursue its nuclear weapons program undisturbed.

President Bush has made it clear that Rumsfeld has his confidence and that, in his judgment, it’s best for America that Rumsfeld stays. This will only result, sooner rather than later, in another political exercise — and that’s all the “generals’ revolt” is — to remove him. Mr. Bush’s opponents see Rumsfeld as vulnerable. They can’t rid themselves of George W. Bush, but they can damage him by damaging Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld is the Big Dog, and those whose feathers he has ruffled in the Pentagon, the press and Congress are the poodles who chase after him. They should follow the principle one Southern gent often reminds me of: If you can’t run with the big dog, you’d better go sit on the porch.
Jed Babbin is a former deputy under-secretary of defense and the author of “Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe are Worse than You Think” and (with Edward Timperlake) “Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States.” He is also a contributing editor at FamilySecurityMatters.org.
Examiner

[bradclark1]

Jed Babbin served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration.
Duuh! Does anything else need to be said? :hmm:
The guy has elephants on his pajamas and Miniter is his room mate. Try and do better.

[The Avon Lady]

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[Ducimus]

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