U.S. generals mutiny

The Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, General Peter Schoomaker, has refused to submit a budget plan for 2008 to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The general insists the Army simply doesn't have enough money to do what is being asked of it. "There is no sense in us submitting a budget that we can't execute, a broken budget," he declared. Congress has been passing emergency spending bills to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but the Army says Iraq is now straining its regular budget.

Schoomaker's rebellion is a particularly bitter pill for Rumsfeld who personally asked him to come out of retirement three years ago to become Chief of Staff. But then these are not happy days for the Secretary of Defense. Major General John Batiste, the former commander of the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division in Iraq who retired in protest over the conduct of the war, said yesterday, "Donald Rumsfeld is not a competent wartime leader. He surrounds himself with like-minded and compliant subordinates who do not grasp the importance of the principles of war, the complexities of Iraq or the human dimension of warfare. . . ." Major General Paul Eaton, a retired officer who was in charge of training Iraq troops, added, "Mr Rumsfeld and his immediate team must be replaced or we will see two more years of extraordinarily bad decision-making." Their views are little consolation to peacemongers, however; Batiste and Eaton want more money, more troops and a longer commitment.

With Bush et al. losing the people and now the military, where goes the empire?