This morning after reading this, I was looking for that quote by Bush when he said he was going to listen to the generals in the field and not the politicians about troop levels? The fork-tongued devil was slippery, though, and I couldn't find it.
I did find this article about General John Riggs, who suffered the loss of a star and an unceremonious end to his 39-year career after speaking plainly about the Army being overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Washington - John Riggs spent 39 years in the Army, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery during the Vietnam War and working his way up to become a three-star general entrusted with creating a high-tech Army for the 21st century.
But on a spring day last year, Riggs was told by senior Army officials that he would be retired at a reduced rank, losing one of his stars because of infractions considered so minor that they were not placed in his official record.
He was given 24 hours to leave the Army. He had no parade in review, no rousing martial music, no speeches or official proclamations praising his decades in uniform, the trappings that normally herald a high-level military retirement.
Instead, Riggs went to a basement room at Fort Myer, Va., and signed some mandatory forms. Then a young sergeant mechanically presented him with a flag and a form letter of thanks from President Bush.
"That's the coldest way in the world to leave," Riggs, 58, said in a drawl that betrays his rural roots in southeast Missouri. "It's like being buried and no one attends your funeral."
The Army's story is that Riggs "allow[ed] a contractor to perform functions that should have been undertaken only by government employees," such as drafting congressional testimony and responding to correspondence.
The real story?
In a January 2004 interview with The Sun, Riggs said the Army was too small to meet its global commitments and must be substantially increased.
The interview made him the first senior active-duty officer to publicly urge a larger Army - and the first to publicly take on Rumsfeld and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, who had repeatedly told lawmakers that such increases were not necessary.
After the interview appeared, Pentagon sources said, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz stormed into the office of the Army's vice chief of staff, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., and demanded an explanation for Riggs' views. Riggs said Casey called him that day and ordered him not to talk about troop increases but to "stay in your lane."
Casey, Riggs said, then asked him when he was planning to retire.
The article says that Rigg's star could be restored by an act of Congress. There's a lot of vital business awaiting the new Democratic majority, but restoring Rigg's star would be a nice symbolic act -- that we value one general's honesty and integrity in sticking up for our overburdened military families.