Amazing article in the current issue of Vanity Fair.
The six retired generals who stepped forward last spring to publicly attack Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's handling of the Iraq war had to overcome a culture of reticence based on civilian control of the military. But while each man acted separately, all shared one experience: a growing outrage over the administration's incompetence, leading some of the nation's finest soldiers to risk their reputations and cross a time-honored line.
The Night of the Generals: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com
I always figured that 9/11 was just an excuse for the Bush administration to declare war on Iraq. The article talks about General John Batiste, former commander of the First Infantry
Division
From March 2001 to June 2002, Batiste worked alongside Wolfowitz. ("Unflappable," Wolfowitz later called him.) In that position, he saw the Iraq war take shape even before September 11, then saw the plan solidify. He was there that Saturday morning in early 2002, for instance, when Rumsfeld, unhappy with the proposed troop numbers, sent General Tommy Franks, the CentCom commander, packing back to Tampa with orders to come up with a way to do the war on the cheap. Batiste says he had doubts from the outset, but though he had Wolfowitz's ear daily, he didn't bend it; someone else, he thought, surely would. "I didn't always agree with his thinking," he says, "but you have a certain amount of trust that your government and its apparatus will look at all sides of something before they go to war."
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