This is interesting - 6 Senior Generals go early...

EmperorMing · Post by **EmperorMing** » 2003-08-13 08:16am

http://www.military.com/NewContent?file ... RC=army.nl

Kind of makes you wonder...

EmperorMing · Post by **EmperorMing** » 2003-08-13 08:18am

"The only message that I can discern from the forced retirements is that Rumsfeld does not trust his senior Army generals, nor they him. Those officers who have committed themselves to serve their nation in Army uniform also know that decades of loyal service - which includes voicing honest disagreement over profound issues - means little or nothing to their political masters... "

Uh huh.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-08-13 10:16am

EmperorMing wrote:"The only message that I can discern from the forced retirements is that Rumsfeld does not trust his senior Army generals, nor they him. Those officers who have committed themselves to serve their nation in Army uniform also know that decades of loyal service - which includes voicing honest disagreement over profound issues - means little or nothing to their political masters... "

Uh huh.

The people Rumsfeld has been getting rid of are the yes men who survived Clinton. In fact he's been looking to pull a number of officers who where forced to retire under Clinton back into active service, He's also shown a predilection for officers who will stand there ground on issues which was not what Cohen liked.

However there is also a difference between standing your ground in private and attempting to go around the secretary of defence in public, which several generals attempted with Crusader.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2003-08-13 04:27pm

It looks like all of those guys are in the materials side. Most likely this is to smooth the way for Rumsfeld's plans to revamp the military, the Army in particular, into a lighter force designed to take care of brush wars and terrorist hunts rather than fighting WWIII. A lot of the general are from the old school that spent their careers preparing for war with the Soviet Union; now they oppose his plans and as Sea Skimmer noted, tried to do an end run on Rumsfeld. It's nothing more than office politics in the end. Nothing sinister.

Andrew J. · Post by **Andrew J.** » 2003-08-13 06:35pm

Just looks like ordinary politics to me.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2003-08-13 06:56pm

Rumsfeld is starting to annoy me - he's come out in favor of NOT expanding
the military - especially the Army - newsflash, it takes PEOPLE to effectively
police a fuckign country, you can't just plop one of your lightweight brigade
combat teams and expect it to police a fucking huge country all by itself!

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-08-13 06:58pm

MKSheppard wrote:Rumsfeld is starting to annoy me - he's come out in favor of NOT expanding
the military - especially the Army - newsflash, it takes PEOPLE to effectively
police a fuckign country, you can't just plop one of your lightweight brigade
combat teams and expect it to police a fucking huge country all by itself!

The military as it stands is still under funded. He's quite right to oppose expansion until where properly funding and manning everything we've got now. Hate Congress and Klinton.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2003-08-13 07:00pm

Sea Skimmer wrote: The military as it stands is still under funded. He's quite right to oppose expansion until where properly funding and manning everything we've got now. Hate Congress and Klinton.

You need lots of PEOPLE....not shiny multimillion dollar tanks and Stryker
IFVs to patrol and police a country....Just get some money, recruit about
10,000 more people next year, give them some old surplus M113s from our
warstocks and have them patrol in Iraq.

Post by **Vympel** » 2003-08-14 05:38am

MKSheppard wrote: You need lots of PEOPLE....not shiny multimillion dollar tanks and Stryker
IFVs to patrol and police a country....Just get some money, recruit about
10,000 more people next year, give them some old surplus M113s from our
warstocks and have them patrol in Iraq.

Can't argue with that one. It would be a pittance to by a Division's worth of applique armor for M113A3, and it's a damn sight better than a Hummer.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2003-08-14 09:28am

Vympel wrote: Can't argue with that one. It would be a pittance to by a Division's worth of applique armor for M113A3, and it's a damn sight better than a Hummer.

I mean christ, half our problems are not because we don't have enough
tanks and planes...we have entire DIVISIONS' worth of equipment sitting
in storage depots and floating on RO-RO ships all over the world...

What our problem is, is we've stretched the Army to the breaking point,
we have x amount of people in Bosnia, x amount in Iraq, x amount in South
Korea, etc etc, and unless we boost our manpower count, somewhere,
someone HAS to get fucked up the ass, so someone can come home after
a 1 year deployment.