John Batiste: A Profile in Integrity

By now, everyone who does not live in a neo-luddite Unabomber cabin has seen the VoteVets.org commercial featuring retired Major General John Batiste – the one in which he proclaims openly “Mr. President, you did not listen. You 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.”

Everyone also knows by now that CBS News fired the General from his consulting position because of the ads.

Something tells me that General Batiste is not troubled by the fickle devotion of the CBS news division. Not after I read his description of the decision making process that led him to forgo a third star and command of day-to-day operations; casting aside a 31-year military career in the process.

“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.”

But General Batiste did not step out of the active duty role just to step into a cushy defense industry job. Instead, he now runs a small steel fabricating plant in Rochester, New York that has no ties to the defense industry at all.

It just looks like the man has scruples in spades. There is no wishy-washiness, there is no flip-flopping and there is zero room for rationalizations or statements like “what you have to understand.” Since resigning and retiring in 2005, he has been steadfast and committed. He was among the first to criticize failed Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld (Rumsfailed?) and call for his ouster.

General Batiste said he chose to go public with his critique of the war effort only after 30 years of honoring the Army’s rules of silence. He said it was that time commanding 22,000 troops in combat, in 2004 and 2005, that convinced him that American fighting in Iraq was short of vision as well as troops.

“There was never enough. There was never a reserve,” he said. “Again and again, we had to move troops by as many as 200 miles out of our area of operations to support another sector. We would pull troops out of contact with the enemy and move them into contact with the enemy somewhere else. The minute we’d leave, the insurgents would pick up on that, and kill everybody who had been friendly.”

He is quick to point out that VoteVets is not an antiwar organization – but it is against the Iraq war/occupation. The organization has thus far done an excellent job of walking that tightrope

VoteVets.org says it has tried to calibrate its message carefully, although there is a limit to the nuance that can fit into 30-second television spots. (Two other retired generals, Paul D. Eaton and Wesley K. Clark, speak in the campaign’s other advertisements.)

As described by General Batiste, the message is not antiwar; it argues that continuing the war in Iraq as a civil, sectarian conflict that cannot be won by outside forces is crippling the Army and the Marine Corps. It does not deny the danger of violent Islamic extremism, he says, but contends that the war in Iraq prevents the armed services from preparing to battle other global security threats.

And it says that if terrorism, and especially terrorists armed with unconventional weapons, truly threaten America’s very survival, then the rest of the country — not just the military — should be called to sacrifice.

America stands at a fork in the road. We must choose our path carefully. I vote we follow men like General Batiste and Lt. Colonel Yingling - and Tommy “Stupidest Man on the Planet” Franks and Jack Keane can just fade away - and the sooner the better.

As for me, I will stand shoulder to shoulder and ramrod straight with those who know how a Patriot ought to act.

[Cross-posted from Watching Those We Chose]

You be me for a while, and I'll be you

Yet another favorite song from a youth that some might consider misspent...

I however do not share that assessment.

Rock on...

Because Tom Toles is a Frickin' Genius...

[Hat-tip to the Mandarin]

Batiste on Olberman

General Batiste has been fired by CBS for the commercial he made for VoteVets.org.

He and Keith Olberman had a nice chat about it.

Watch it.

[Hattip to Edger.]

Live-Blogging the Edwards conference call...

Saturday, May 12, 2007, 11:24 a.m. Okay – so yesterday I was invited to take part in a conference call with John Edwards. I rsvp’s immediately and got my access code to participate. The call is to start at 11:30 central, so I called in a few minutes early. I’m listening to the muzak and wondering what’s in store. I have no idea what to expect or how many people will be participating.

And the call just started – The Senator is at a commencement and running a few minutes late. We are part of the next phase roll out – and the purpose of this conference call is to launch a new website: www.supportthetroopsendthewar.com – George Bush does not own patriotism.

The Senator was introduced by a Marine Corporal who just returned from Iraq and spoke openly and honestly about the situation our troops face.

This Memorial Day we are going to reclaim patriotism. The Senator is asking us – that’s you and me, Bub – to speak up now. We aren’t going to wait for anyone else and we are not waiting for an election. Where ever you are, speak up and make your voice heard. Support the troops. Bring them home.

The purpose of the call was the introduce the new website which is just rolled out. It will serve as a nexus for local activities and events for Memorial Weekend.

This looks like a grass-roots thing, which is just fine by me. Let's visit the website and see what's happening in our areas. And if nothing is happening...make something happen!

The Senator's people should email edger10@gmail.com and get the new site on the Out of Iraq Bloggers Caucus blogroll. (Yes, I emailed the site administrators with that suggestion. I'm not banking on them being regular readers of my rantings.)

Breaking and will be Updated

8:13 a.m. cdt: Only the bare facts are known as yet, but apparently a patrol of seven soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were ambushed in Mahmoodiyah. Five dead and three missing.

Off to the internets to see what I can find out...

9:26 a.m. the best information I can find is from the New York Times:

After the pre-dawn attack near Mahmoudiya, a Sunni stronghold about 20 miles south of Baghdad, nearby units heard explosions and a drone plane later observed two burning vehicles, the statement said.

Troops who arrived later found five of the soldiers dead. The other three members of the patrol were gone, according to the statement, from Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq.

The military refused to specify whether the Iraqi interpreter was among those killed or among the missing, citing security.

''Make no mistake: We will never stop looking for our soldiers until their status is definitively determined, and we continue to pray for their safe return,'' Caldwell said.

General-ly Speaking

Now we have an active duty General speaking up that he does not have sufficient troops to do the job he has been tasked with, and he is doing so publicly. Major General (two stars) Randy Mixon has expressed his need for more troops since taking his command in Diyala province in September. "I'm going to need additional forces," he said, "to get that situation to a more acceptable level, so the Iraqi security forces will be able in the future to handle that."

He was absolutely scathing in his assessments of the Iraqi government.

Mixon emphasized that he had asked for more troops shortly after arriving in Iraq last September, well before the U.S. troop buildup was started in Baghdad. Mixon said he saw that violence was rising and the region was becoming a stronghold for Sunni extremists tied to al-Qaida in Iraq.

He said he had been given a battalion in reinforcements, or about 800 soldiers, and that Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the day-to-day commander in Iraq, has said he would send additional forces when possible.

"The level of violence began to increase before the surge," Mixon said. "It has increased, of course, during the surge . . . (because) we are sure that there are elements, both Sunni extremist and Shia extremist, that have moved out of Baghdad."

It is rare for an officer of Mixon's rank to publicly call for more troops. When Donald H. Rumsfeld was secretary of Defense, there were intense pressures on officers to not make such requests, even privately, according to officers who served in Iraq.

Mixon's comments were the first of what could be a succession of blunt evaluations by officers under Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, a veteran of the Bosnian conflict who is now an analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations.

"I suspect the new Defense secretary has told general officers to speak their minds," Nash said. "It's going to be hard for some in the administration; suddenly they're going to feel it from the inside. I think you're going to see more of it."

One Pentagon official said Mixon's public request for more troops was being viewed as an attempt to pressure the new commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, into sending more troops to Diyala from Baghdad, since the overstretched Army is currently unable to send substantial numbers of additional reinforcements from the U.S.

Mixon is not known for publicly airing problems he faces in the field. One recently retired Army general close to the northern Iraq commander said his frankness likely stemmed from a new "command climate" under Petraeus that is more conducive to blunt evaluations.

Many Army generals also have been stung by disclosures by lower-ranking officers. A recent article in the Armed Forces Journal by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq War veteran who is deputy commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, accused the Army's top generals of botching the war and misleading the American public and Congress.

"That's weighing on the consciences of the general officers of our Army," Nash said. "(Yingling) said they failed to live up to their sacred oath of telling the truth. As a consequence, I think everybody is saying, `Not me. I'm not going to be guilty of that.' "

Frankly, Yingling called out a group of men who should not have needed to be called out. Every last General in uniform now was either a junior officer during Vietnam, or came in right after. In either case, they know the devastation to the officer corps and the rank and file when the Pentagon propagates lie upon lie and tries to justify unjust conflict and bloodshed.

Look for more active duty Generals and Colonels to make with the public proclamations.

Make no mistake – this is happening for one reason and one reason only…the SecDef has bestowed his blessing on senior officers to speak out. (But why? Gates doesn’t have his morning coffee without considering four agendas that no one else knows about.)

I am watching Gates operate right now, and wondering, frankly, just what the fuck he is up to.

He is a rogue Secretary – the one man that Karl Rove has no dirt on – in fact, the inverse of that is probably true. He is the one man in the administration that the Mayberry Machiavellis can not control, and that wildcard makes watching the interactions between the White House and His Father’s Man, sent to save him, interesting. Especially if you are familiar with Gates earlier work, as I am. I detest the man, don't trust him any farther than I can throw a bull by the tail; but damn, I respect the talent.