How Bush Wrecked the Army

The generals' revolt has spread inside the Pentagon, and the point of the spear is one of Donald Rumsfeld's most favored officers, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff. This new phase of rebellion isn't aimed at the war in Iraq directly, as was the protest by six retired generals that made headlines last spring. But in some ways, it's more potent, and not just because Schoomaker is very much on active duty. His challenge is dramatic because he's questioning one of the war's consequences—its threat to the Army's ability to keep functioning.

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  thanks to Antiwar.com

Rumsfeld's AutoCarterization

A recent report in "Aviation Week" (Sept 25, 2006) leads by saying, "The U.S. Air Force is planning to reduce funding for pilot training and construction around the globe, although Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley says he hopes to keep procurement and research accounts intact as the Pentagon builds its Fiscal 2008 budget". This is one of the recent spate of reports documenting shortfalls in the Department of Defense's $500+ billion budget. Predictably, the courtiers of Versailles on the Potomac are preparing for the silly season as they form their battle lines with Congress. Assuming the Aviation Week report is correct (as it usually is on matters relating to future cash flows to the defense industry), Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael Moseley is either stupid or incredibly ignorant ... or, more likely, supremely cynical, because he is making exactly the same dysfunctional decision his predecessors made in the early to mid 1970s, which inevitably created the readiness horrors of the "hollow military" that hosed President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s.

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