By General William Odom

04/28/07 "ICH" -- -- The following is a transcript of the Democratic Radio Address delivered by Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.) on Saturday April 28, 2007:

“Good morning, this is Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army, retired.

“I am not now nor have I ever been a Democrat or a Republican. Thus, I do not speak for the Democratic Party. I speak for myself, as a non-partisan retired military officer who is a former Director of the National Security Agency. I do so because Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, asked me.

“In principle, I do not favor Congressional involvement in the execution of U.S. foreign and military policy. I have seen its perverse effects in many cases. The conflict in Iraq is different. Over the past couple of years, the President has let it proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot be rescued.

“Thus, he lets the United States fly further and further into trouble, squandering its influence, money, and blood, facilitating the gains of our enemies. The Congress is the only mechanism we have to fill this vacuum in command judgment.

“To put this in a simple army metaphor, the Commander-in-Chief seems to have gone AWOL, that is ‘absent without leave.’ He neither acts nor talks as though he is in charge. Rather, he engages in tit-for-tat games.

“Most Americans suspect that something is fundamentally wrong with the President’s management of the conflict in Iraq. And they are right.

“We cannot ‘win’ a war that serves our enemies interests and not our own. Thus continuing to pursue the illusion of victory in Iraq makes no sense. We can now see that it never did.


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17619.htm

This general assumes that President Bush was "present" at some point in his administration with the title of his essay.

I don't really think he's ever been "on the job."

More like on the sauce.

(We all know how he got the job. Thank you, Supreme Court. Not!)

A President Gone AWOL

By John Nichols, TheNation.com. May 3, 2007.

- snip -

Bush has made his position clear: Democrats, many of whom rightly argued four years ago that going to war in Iraq would be the huge mistake it has turned out to be, and who have since been far ahead of the White House in identifying the nature of the crisis that has since developed, are now to be dismissed as the players of political games when they advocate for a strategy that would begin bringing US troops home from the conflict on a schedule beginning October 1.

That's a remarkable line of analysis from a president whose inability to recognize the flaws in his own neo-conservative vision has rendered him wrong at every turn, and whose determination to play politics with life-and-death decisions has defined not just his approach to the Iraq war but his tenure as president.

- snip -

"Twelve weeks ago, I asked the Congress to pass an emergency war spending bill that would provide our brave men and women in uniform with the funds and flexibility they need," said Bush in framing his veto message. "Instead, members of the House and the Senate passed a bill that substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgment of our military commanders."

The problem with Bush's "I'm-so-above-politics" line is that he has been disregarding advice from military commanders since before the war began.

Consider the response to his veto from top military men who commanded troops in Iraq.

"The President vetoed our troops and the American people," says retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste. "His stubborn commitment to a failed strategy in Iraq is incomprehensible. He committed our great military to a failed strategy in violation of basic principles of war. His failure to mobilize the nation to defeat world wide Islamic extremism is tragic. We deserve more from our commander-in-chief and his administration."

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/51367

As the troops came home wounded and needing a commander in chief who placed their care and welfare above everything else, Bush was as clueless as he was about the incompetence of Rumsfeld or the growing Fiasco in Iraq. Bush didn’t know because that was not a priority for him. He did not have anybody he demanded make sure the troops who had suffered severe wounds and their families had what they needed, and that the Army he commanded was doing what was require to for the troops. In all things military the commander bears responsibility for all things under his command. The troops are not responsible when the Army fails them, the Comander In Chief is, George W Bush was just AWOL again.

http://whitenoiseinsanity.wordpress.com/20...all-over-again/

President AWOL officially has passed the buck. We have a war czar!

Bush Finds A War Czar

President Bush has finally found a war czar. Army Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute will coordinate U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. At least five retired four-star generals turned down the new position before Lute -- a three-star general -- came on board, according to the Washington Post.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/16/...in2811860.shtml