Younger army officers also want Rumsfeld to step down
By Khalid Hasan
Daily Times - Pakistan
WASHINGTON: The "dump Rumsfeld" movement is gathering steam, with younger officers in military academies, armed services' staff colleges and even command posts and mess halls calling for the ouster of the defence secretary.
Last week, a group of retired US generals called for the secretary's resignation, a call both President George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld have ignored. The president, in fact, made it a point to praise Rumsfeld's performance.
According to a report in the New York Times on Sunday, "Junior and midlevel officers are discussing whether the war plans for Iraq reflected unvarnished military advice, whether the retired generals should have spoken out, whether active-duty generals will feel free to state their views in private sessions with the civilian leaders and, most divisive of all, whether Mr Rumsfeld should resign."
The newspaper says in recent weeks it has discussed those issues with dozens of younger officers and cadets in classrooms and with combat units in the field, as well as in informal conversations at the Pentagon and in e-mail exchanges and telephone calls. "To protect their careers, the officers were granted anonymity so they could speak frankly about the debates they have had and have heard."
One army colonel said an informal poll among his classmates indicated that about 25 percent believed that Rumsfeld should resign, and 75 percent believed that he should remain. But of the second group, two-thirds thought he should acknowledge errors that were made and "show that he is not the intolerant and inflexible person some paint him to be".
An army major in the Special Forces said, "I believe that a large number of officers hate Rumsfeld as much as I do, and would like to see him go." Another army major who served in Iraq said a fresh round of debates about the future of the American military had also broken out.
Simply put, the question is whether the focus should be, as Rumsfeld believes, on a lean high-tech force with an eye toward possible opponents like China, or on troop-heavy counterinsurgency missions more suited to hunting terrorists, with spies and boots on the ground.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006%5C04%5C24%5Cstory_24-4-20 06_pg7_3
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