More on Rumskull, the retired generals, and the need for trust

In Rumskull defense #2: There has to be trust, I detailed five reasons why military officers could (and probably should) distrust Rumskull and the rest of the top civilian leadership at DoD. Well, add another reason to the list.

Kevin Drum has a post which describes this new reason. Please read Kevin's post. It discusses an article in the Wall Street Journal about retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste. The article and Kevin's post describe how Batiste had complaints about how the Iraq war was being being planned and conducted and how he voiced those complaints in-house--the way things were supposed to be done. And for that, he was publicly put on the spot by Rumskull, whereby Rumskull asked him a question in public about an issue on which Rumskull knew that Batitste held a view opposite of Rumskull's. What was so shitty about that was that Rumskull knew that, due to the protocol of keeping disagreements behind closed doors and within the chain of command, Batiste would not publicly voice his contrary opinion, so Batiste ended up, through not stating his true opinion, seeming to publicly agree with Rumskull, and then Rumskull was able to use such "agreement" as evidence that he was listening to his military commanders and gave them everything they asked for.

What an asshole.