U.S. Navy denies deal to battle Somali piracy - Apr 18, 2006

U.S. Navy denies deal to battle Somali piracy - CNN, Apr 18, 2006

But Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown, spokesman for the U.S. Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, denied any deal. "The Somali government did not talk to the U.S. Navy. The U.S. Navy has no agreement with the Somali government," Brown said.

I trust that that the U.S. Navy is not running their own foreign policy on the side.

However we do have a combined civilian and military task force in the area and I wonder why CNN couldn't find the time to ask them about this. Are the reporters lazy or just ignorant?

Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa

-HJC

Army not fit to fight GWoT?

Generals' Revolt - PBS Newshour, April 18, 2006

The second thing is we put an army on the battlefield that I had been a part of for 37 years. The truth of the matter is: It doesn't have any doctrine, nor was it educated and trained, to deal with an insurgency. And that insurgency challenged us, as I knew it would for that first year.

Now if only we had a ground force that has trained to deal with stability operations for the past 66 years.

Perhaps even Corps sized would be a little small if they had to shoulder the brunt of the Global War of Terror on their own, simply because the US Army couldn't be bothered to properly prepare for the post Cold War world.

USMC Small Wars Center of Excellence

-HJC

The buck does not stop with the SoD

Debate Over Rumsfeld's Future Grows - CBS News, Apr 16th, 2006

A tumultuous week for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld did not end on a quiet note as prominent military and political leaders debated his future on the Sunday morning talk shows.

Busy McCain expresses views on Rumsfeld, immigration, Iraq war - The Tribune, Apr 15th, 2006

Or more precisely, the generals are falling in line with McCain's long-standing assessment, McCain said Friday.

"I was asked a long time ago, I think a year and a half or two years ago, if I had confidence in Secretary Rumsfeld. I was asked that directly. I said, 'No,' " the Republican senator said during a news conference at his Phoenix office.

Darth Rumsfeld - The American Prospect February 26, 2001

Though genuflected to by the Washington press corps and political establishment as a genteel graybeard, the real Rumsfeld may be, in fact, much closer to Darth Vader, both on defense issues and as a practitioner of politics. "The notion that he's a gray eminence," laments William Hartung, the World Policy Institute's veteran defense analyst and a longtime Rumsfeld watcher, "is, in large part, based on press laziness."

Rumsfeld's agenda and failings were very clear from the start and if Senator McCain had a problem with the Secretary he could have held up the confirmation. He didn't.

If Senator McCain has a problem with America's defense policy then he should take it up with the President who has repeatedly turned down Secretary Rumsfeld's offers to resign.

This isn't about 2003. It's about 2006 and 2008. If Senator McCain is serious in his policy objections and believes that the nation is being endangered then he should take the constitutional path and come out with support for Bush's impeachment.

Otherwise Senator either shut up and get back to work or resign from the Senate and go campaign full time.

In this time of crisis, American, like Iraq, needs a stable government, so either accept the team we have now or make a change at the top, because the buck does not stop on the desk of the Secretary of Defense.

-HJC