Story on Major General John Batiste

From The Wall Street Journal, here's a story from a few days back about Major General John Batiste, one of the retired generals calling for Rumsfeld to step down:

Military officers, like Gen. Batiste, are constantly reminded that their role is to advise civilian leaders and execute their orders -- even if they disagree with them.

Now he was stepping way out of that culture. Gen. Batiste and his wife, the children of career military officers, had spent their entire lives in the Army. He fought in the first Gulf War, led a brigade into Bosnia, and in 2004 commanded 22,000 troops in Iraq, losing more than 150 soldiers.

"I was shocked at where I was," he says. "I had spent the last 31 years of my life defending our great Constitution." Over the course of the war in Iraq he says he saw troop shortages that allowed a deadly insurgency to take root, felt politics were put ahead of hard-won military lessons and was haunted by the regretful words of a top general in Vietnam.

The war in Iraq should have been a decisive victory for the U.S., Gen. Batiste told himself, as he paced in the parking garage. He blamed Mr. Rumsfeld for his "contemptuous attitude" and his "refusal to take sound military advice." As he got into his car to drive home, he recalls thinking: "If I don't speak out, who the hell else will?"

Before Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld drag us into more of their costly adventures, many more Americans need to speak out.