PressCoverage

Tucker: Active-Duty Generals Will ‘Revolt’ Against Bush If He Maintains Escalation Into 2008 »

Appearing on NBC’s Chris Matthews Show this morning, Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Cynthia Tucker revealed that sources within the military are warning of “a revolt from active-duty generals if September rolls around and the president is sticking with the surge into ‘08.” Watch it:


Noting that retired generals such as Gen. John Batiste have already begun voicing their discontent with the president’s strategy in Iraq, Tucker added that the generals “don’t want to fall by the wayside like the generals in Vietnam did, kept pushing a war that they knew was lost.”

When President Bush vetoed the Iraq timeline legislation earlier this month, he claimed that “the measure would ‘impose impossible conditions on our commanders in combat’ by forcing them to ‘take fighting directions from politicians 6,000 miles away in Washington, DC.’”

But despite past claims that “the right force level” will be determined by “the sober judgement of our military leaders,” the Bush administration has a proven track record of disregarding the advice of military leaders. As recently as last December, when the White House was first pushing its escalation plan, the administration explicitly ignored “the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

It appears the commanders on the ground in Iraq are getting tired of “taking fighting directions” from a politician “6,000 miles away” in the White House. And they might not stay quiet for long.

Transcript: expand post »

BelichickFan

Anti war stuff from Chris Mathews . . . shocking.

PressCoverage

actually, it's the Atlanta Journal Constitution...

Patriot_in_NY

Even less shocking. The most left paper in the country.

Makes the Grey Lady look conservative.

BelichickFan

Understood - and covered by Lefy Mathews.

There's lots of pro war stuff out there if the media chose to cover it.

QuiGon

PressCoverage is just showing what we all already know: that he is a complete moron without a slightest clue regarding how the military works. I love it when liberals discuss the military because they just humiliate themselves over and over.

All servicemen swear a duty and oath to the Constitution of the United States of America. This isn't some 3rd world African backwater. If any general suggested a revolt (or disobeying orders in any manner), he would immediately get the ***** beaten out of him by about 100 other generals before spending the rest of his life in Levenworth.

The worst we'd ever see is someone resigning in protest. And for every general that resigns, there are a couple thousand colonels plenty happy to put a star on their shoulders.

PressCoverage

leave it to our resident Star Wars masturbator to make it personal... i provided a link to a story.. .i didn't discuss the military... nonetheless, jaggov, when i do chose to disuss it, it's clearly with a bit more clarity than the minimizing spin you are trying to offer here...

no one said anything about a coup attempt... i mean, we're all well aware that youre more dramatic than a junior high school girl, but to arrive as such a pretentious deduction is a bit of a stretch... still, your president has shown a propensity to ignore his military commanders, despite pledging to follow their lead... and they've grown quite sick of Boy King's idiocy

it's funny, though, that, unsolicited, you'll run your wiseass mouth about me directly and yet don't have the courage to unblock me and deal with the give and take... in other words, you don't even have frame of reference, because you can't even read the original post, and yet your pie hole is bloviating away about what i must be saying...

clearly, the navy didn't teach you accountability...

Patriot_in_NY

I love how everyone points at the ex. Gen. Batiste as a anti-war critic as proof that our generals are unhappy. A lot probably are, but not for the reasons WE think they are.

Convenient, except that if you look closely Batiste's record, regardless of what he's saying now, he's been mostly an advocate for MORE AGGRESSIVE action, not less.

Like I said, they've been so partisan in thier coverage of the war, it's very difficult to take anything the AJC says too seriously.

DarrylS

Consider that this is true, wouldn't this be one of the most interesting points of history in our country? Sometimes I think that this whole Blackwater thing and the arming of mercenaries, is an attempt to field a private military force either to protect the inner circle or to be used for a coup in the future. I find this whole trend as very unsettling.. the mistake is going into a country without being provoked.. a whole bunch of crap happens after we do this kind of stuff.

__________________
"Being the best doesn't mean you always win. It just means you win more than anyone else".. tweet from Kurt Warner to Tom Brady.

Patriot_in_NY

No, this is fairly typical of our most recent history of warfare.

... and no, going into a country with out without provocation doesn't make one whit of difference on success or failure militarily. Beleive me, if there is ANY truth to this story, then it's because the OTG commanders are frustrated at lack of progress (success), not because of Blackwater, the mission itself or any other "civilian" reason we come up with.

If they are pissed, it's because, as typical in the history of our recent warfare, the combat operations are being manipulated by non-combatants (politicians) with motivations that do not have relavence to the situational conditions and overall goals for the mission.

Things went fine in the initial combat operations, which were controlled specifically by military units (or the CIA field guys), in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It was only the after-operations, controlled mostly by paper-pushing morons, that things got FUBAR.

So while I do not doupt that many of the military commandars aren't pissed, the AJC (and others) politicizing it for thier own gain is just as annoying.