Another General Speaks Out

General John Batiste just couldn't take it anymore. He's speaking out about what's happened "on the ground" in Iraq and as one may imagine, it ain't pretty:

"“You (President Bush) continue to pursue a failed strategy that is breaking our great Army and Marine Corps. I left the Army in protest in order to speak out. Mr. President, you have placed our nation in peril. Our only hope is that Congress will act now to protect our fighting men and women.”
Those are powerful, inflammatory words from General Batiste, a retired major general who spent 31 years in the Army, a profession sworn to unflinching loyalty to civilian control of the military....
“I am outraged, as are the majority of Americans,” General Batiste said over sandwiches in a blue-collar diner here. “I am a lifelong Republican. But it is past time for change.”...
“In the Army, you communicate up the chain of command, and I communicated vehemently with my senior commanders while I was in Iraq,” he said. Of his departure from the Army, he said: “It was the toughest decision of my life. I paced my quarters for days. I didn’t sleep for nights. But I was not willing to compromise my principles for one more minute.”"

Good for him. But, it would have been better for us if he and others had been more outspoken about the possibilities in Iraq before the war. But I'm still proud of him for speaking out now, now that we KNOW.

Odom Says Bush AWOL

That's Odom as in General William Odom:

"General Odom has served as Director of the National Security Agency and Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army’s senior intelligence officer.":

"“To put this in a simple army metaphor, the Commander-in-Chief seems to have gone AWOL, that is ‘absent without leave.’ He neither acts nor talks as though he is in charge. Rather, he engages in tit-for-tat games.

“Some in Congress on both sides of the aisle have responded with their own tits-for-tats. These kinds of games, however, are no longer helpful, much less amusing. They merely reflect the absence of effective leadership in a crisis. And we are in a crisis.
“Most Americans suspect that something is fundamentally wrong with the President’s management of the conflict in Iraq. And they are right.
“The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place. The war could never have served American interests."

I thought Bush was ready to show some humility after the election, Rumsfeld ouster, and the Baker report, but he still seems as strong-headed as ever. Bush is a lamer lame duck than Tony Blair, and that is one reason why the election season kicked off so soon this time. We're ready for somebody new. Almost anybody new will do.