Rumsfeld Ever Closer To Retirement?

Retired generals in the US have done something extraordinary: publicly demanding that the President sacks his Defence Minister Donald Rumsfeld. President Bush has refused. He is after all the one in charge. The New York Times has a piece on the issue stating that:

"Tensions between civilian leaders and the military brass are routine and occasionally erupt into public view. But the principle of civilian supremacy has never been seriously challenged; the last plotters of a military coup d'état in American history were disgruntled officers faced down by General George Washington at Newburgh, N.Y., in 1783.

In fact, Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice prescribes a court-martial for any commissioned officer who "uses contemptuous words against the president, the vice president, Congress, the secretary of defense" or other federal or state officials."

Mr. Rumsfelds critics thinks he is "wrongheaded and arrogant". Maybe he is. I do remember when he visited some of the American troops in Iraq a year or so ago. One soldier asked the Defence Minister why there was still a grave shortage of reasonably armored vehicles. Apparently the troops used whatever they could find from their own scrap yard and weld it onto their humvees and trucks. Mr. Rumsfeld, obviously unprepared to answer that particular question, slowly answered, if my memory serves me well, that: well... we all know that... you don't go to war with the army you want, but the army you have.

That was most likely not the answer that the worried soldier wanted, but it was probably the only answer the Defence Minister had. At least at that particular time.