General Defends Army Chief Who Spoke Out – New York Times

By JIM RUTENBERG
Published: April 16, 2006
WASHINGTON, April 16 ó Gen. Richard B. Myers, who retired six months ago as the nation’s top military officer, said today that senior administration officials had been wrong to publicly criticize the former Army chief just before the invasion of Iraq for saying the mission could require a much larger force than was ultimately committed.

“He was inappropriately criticized, I believe, for speaking out,” General Myers said during an interview on the ABC News program “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.”

…

General Myers, who has emerged as one of Mr. Rumsfeld’s chief defenders, repeated his comments from late last week that generals speaking out against the defense secretary are inappropriately breaching military etiquette that dictates officers only air complaints with the civilian leadership privately.

But his comments also marked the first time since his retirement that General Myers, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has weighed in on the administration’s handling of the 2003 troop estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who was then the Army chief of staff. General Myers’s remarks today were focused on the criticism of General Shinseki, and not on the substance of his comments about troop levels in Iraq.

The clash three years ago between General Shinseki and the civilian Pentagon leadership still rankles some of his former military colleagues and goes to the heart of the complaints that Mr. Rumsfeld and his top aides ó who are philosophically in favor of a smaller, faster military disregarded calls for more troops to secure Iraq that came even before the invasion began.

In February 2003 General Shinseki, who had commanded the NATO peacekeeping force in Iraq, testified in Congress that peacekeeping operations in Iraq could require several hundred thousand troops, in part because it was a country with “the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems.”

Mr. Wolfowitz told Congress then that the American force could be sufficiently smaller than Mr. Shinseki had estimated because the Iraqis would welcome the Americans and because the country had no history of ethnic strife and was unlike Bosnia. Just this week, commanders on the ground in Iraq have said the current sectarian strife there reminded them of the situation in the former Yugoslavia.

… He added, “Now, there were some mistakes made by, I think, some of the senior civilian leadership in taking General Shinseki on about that comment. I think that was wrong, and I’ve expressed those views, as a matter of fact.”

Group show opening this weekend.
It’s curated by Nathaniel Russell and will be groovy.

featuring work from Erik Bluhm, Kyle Field, Sam Keefner, Devendra Banhart, Lisa Choinacky, Jason Pierce, and John Minardi.

Opening Saturday April 15th 8pm
Lobot Gallery 1800 Campbell St.
Oakland, Calif. 94608

DIRELAND: VILLAGE VOICE FIRES JAMES RIDGEWAY; SYDNEY SCHANBERG QUITS
April 13, 2006

VILLAGE VOICE FIRES JAMES RIDGEWAY; SYDNEY SCHANBERG QUITS

The firing of Washington columnist James Ridgeway by the new management of the Village Voice, and the resignation of the distinguished Pulitizer Prize winner Sydney Schanberg from the paper, represent a sad moment in the history of the New York weekly. I was a columnist for the Voice for some seven years. Jim Ridgeway was not only a colleague but someone I had considered a comrade in the pursuit of truth for many years. Syd Schanberg (right), whom I also have known for years and whose work I have long admired, is the former New York Times reporter and Newsday columnist who is known to the larger public through the movie “The Killing Fields,” describing his intrepid reportorial work for the Times in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge takeover and his indefatigable and devoted search for his Cambodian colleague Dith Pran. Syd is one of the most distinguished names in Americn journalism. That these two superb journalists — Schanberg and Ridgeway — have now vanished from the Voice is a symbol of what is happening to that paper, and of what will most likely happen to all the other alternative weekly papers in the Voice chain (including the L.A. Weekly, for which I have also long written) under the new ownership and management of Michael Lacey’s New Times corporation.

“Democracy Now” this morning had an informative discussion with Ridgeway, Schanberg, and other Voice writers that I urge you to listen to or read. Among other things, Schanberg — explaining why he left the Voice — quotes a definition of the new editorial line given by the new owner, Mike Lacey, to an editorial staff meeting: “He said, ‘If I want to read regular criticism or bashing of the Bush administration, I’ll read the New York Times. I don’t want it in this paper.’î You can both read a transcript of, and listen to, the archived “Democracy Now” broadcast on what’s happening to the Voice, by clicking here.

The letter of protest below is signed by Village Voice writers and staffers, including some of the most able and valuable people still at the weekly, many of whom I’m proud to call friends. I associate myself entirely with their sentiments:

Ridgeway’s track record

For 30 years, James Ridgeway has, in his person, his politics, and his writing, defined what makes the Voice a special publication. From Three Mile Island to 9-11, Ridgeway has provided some of the nation’s most incisive and insightful coverage of government misfeasance and malfeasance. He was one of the first journalists in America to spotlight the threat posed by a resurgent racist and neo-Nazi movement, an issue he hammered away at in the pages of the Voice years before anyone ever heard of Ruby Ridge or Timothy McVeigh. His reports on escalating environmental abuses exposed corporate lawbreakers and bureaucratic indifference. Ridgeway’s writings on conflicts from Bosnia to Baghdad to Haiti have always provided the otherwise unreported flip side of the world according to the mainstream media, in short reporting that jibes precisely with the exact mission of the Voice. Over the past few years, Ridgeway expanded onto the Web, filing regular nuggets of breaking news and even posting video reports on the 2004 elections. In light of this distinguished track record, the decision last week by the Voice’s new ownership to terminate Ridgeway is shameful. It also sends a terrible message as to the sort of coverage that the new ownership portends. We call on Voice Media executive editor Michael Lacey and chairman and CEO Jim Larkin to reverse his discharge.

Tom Robbins
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Darren Reidy

Then take a picture of it. Send it to us at 300dpi, 100%. (If you don’t know what that means, ask somebody who does.) Include the time/place of the photo.

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From the April 13, 2006 Los Angeles Times

Anti-Rumsfeld Chorus Grows

Some military leaders question the public criticism as another retired general urges Defense chief to resign.

By Peter Spiegel and Paul Richter
Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON ó A recent surge in public criticism of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by retired military leaders is the culmination of months of intense but largely private debate among active duty officers about how best to voice dissent over Bush administration policies, according to officers involved in the discussions.

A number of officers have been critical of Iraq policy ó mostly anonymously ó since the administration’s early days. But the calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation are an unusual step for members of the military, who are acutely sensitive to the appearance of challenging civilian leadership of the armed forces.

Displays of public dissension are especially controversial while troops are at war and morale is a concern. In recent months, however, a growing concern that the war’s setbacks may have been predictable as well as avoidable has spilled into public view.

The officers said that challenges to civilian policy were not new ó similar opposition flared during the Clinton administration, particularly around the issue of gays in the military. But many of the latest condemnations come from officers who served in the Iraq war, and the controversy has split the ranks over whether attacks by those officers so soon after retiring are appropriate.

One current general who has debated the issue with high-ranking colleagues spoke, like others, on condition of anonymity when discussing actions of other officers.

“If every guy that retires starts sniping at their old bosses and acts like a political appointee, how do you think senior civilians start choosing their military leaders?” the general said. “Competence goes out the window. It’s all about loyalty and pliability.”

The ranks of Rumsfeld’s critics were joined Wednesday by retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who served as a division commander in Iraq and was a military aide to former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a primary architect of the Iraq invasion.

Batiste said he believed Rumsfeld should resign, arguing that the Pentagon needed a new leader who could work with top officers “without intimidation.”

In an interview, Batiste said negative feelings about Rumsfeld were widespread among generals he served with. He added that there was an almost universal belief that the secretary did not treat military leaders and their opinions with respect.

“It speaks volumes about the leadership climate within the Pentagon,” Batiste said. “Civilian control is absolutely paramount, but in order for it to work, there is a two-way street of respect and dialogue that has to exist.”

Batiste’s criticism follows similar attacks by three other retired generals who were involved in the Iraq war or served in top positions in the Middle East: Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold, former director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, head of training Iraqi forces in 2003; and Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the former head of U.S. Central Command.

Former Defense officials said Batiste’s criticisms were particularly surprising because of his direct role in planning and fighting the war, first as Wolfowitz’s military aide and then as commander of the 1st Infantry Division when it was deployed to oversee central Iraq in 2004.

“Batiste is really the younger generation who has seen this war firsthand,” said Thomas E. White, the Bush administration’s first secretary of the Army and a frequent Rumsfeld critic. “When a guy like that steps up, it takes it to an entirely different level.”

Batiste said his comments were not part of any organized campaign by retired officers.

Although he has worked with Eaton and Newbold, Batiste said he had not talked to either about his decision to go public.

The officers’ falling out with Rumsfeld began over the Defense Department’s treatment of retired Army Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who said at a congressional hearing that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to occupy Iraq, only to be chastised later by Wolfowitz.

The shunting aside of Shineski appears to be something of a touchstone for military critics of Rumsfeld, particularly in the Army, where Shinseki is still well regarded.

One current general said that while the recent criticisms may have brought the uniformed military’s strained relationship with Rumsfeld into the open, debate over whether they should be more forceful about voicing disagreements had raged for months.

“The Newbolds and Eatons and the public discussion is spilling over from the internal discussion,” said the currently serving general. “This has been a rising issue within the military.”

Criticism of political leaders by retired generals is nothing new. Historians note that former military leaders dating back to the American Revolution have written criticisms of the conduct of wars, and Rumsfeld dismissed many of the criticisms this week as just the latest in that tradition.

“It’s historic, it’s always been the case, and I see nothing really very new or surprising about it,” he said at a Pentagon news conference.

But Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of international relations at Boston University and a Vietnam veteran, said he believed it was unprecedented for retired senior officers who had so recently served during a war to criticize civilian leaders while troops were still in the field.

“I would take this as evidence that the search for scapegoats with regard to the Iraq war has now been fully engaged by the military,” Bacevich said.

“The officer corps doesn’t want to get stuck with responsibility for a war that has already proven to be a disappointment and could result in failure. This is an indication that Rumsfeld has been selected as the military’s preferred scapegoat,” he said.

The debate within the Pentagon has been influenced by the lessons of the Vietnam War, a conflict many current military leaders believe was lost because military chiefs did not stand up to civilian war plans.

A 1997 book on the subject, “Dereliction of Duty,” by H.R. McMaster, now an Army colonel serving in Iraq, has been required reading for many Pentagon officers.

“There was a deep bitterness over Vietnam and the way the [service] chiefs had been co-opted,” said Richard H. Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina who oversaw McMaster’s work on the book.

Kohn said it was a lesson sent repeatedly to all Army officers: “They said: ‘We’re never going to put up with this again, we’re not going to be put in that position again by the civilians.’ ”

Nevertheless, Kohn, who has discussed relations with civilian leaders with several top officers, said he believed it might be dangerous for such recently retired generals to go public with such criticism.

“If they go out and attack the policy after leaving and they get personal about it, they’re undermining civilian control,” Kohn said.

SFChronicle – Wednesday, April 12, 2006

SANTA CRUZ

Military recruiters, confronted by crowd, leave campus job fair

Anti-war protesters at university block doors to building

Diana Walsh, Chronicle Staff Writer

Four military recruiters hastily fled a job fair Tuesday morning at UC Santa Cruz after a raucous crowd of student protesters blocked an entrance to the building where the Army and National Guard had set up information tables.

Members of Students Against War, who organized the counter-recruiting protest, loudly chanted “Don’t come back. Don’t come back” as the recruiters left the hilltop campus, escorted by several university police officers.

“The situation had degraded to the point where there was a possibility of injury to either a student or law enforcement officer. We certainly didn’t want that to happen,” said Capt. Will Griffin, one of the Army recruiters.

University officials had been aware for weeks that Students Against War planned a protest to prevent military personnel from participating in the school’s biannual job fair held for students.

The student organization has become a bit of a cause celebre of the national anti-war movement ever since it was discovered that the group’s protest of the same job fair last April landed it in a Pentagon surveillance file, which listed the protest as a “credible threat” to military facilities or personnel.

Universities that receive federal funds are required to allow military recruiters on campus. But campus officials had worried that Tuesday’s protest would get out of hand as it had last April, when Students Against War protesters surrounded the table where military personnel sat, and hundreds of other demonstrators engaged in an angry protest outside. Some of the recruiters reported that their tires had been slashed and one employee at the career center was injured.

David Kliger, campus provost and executive vice chancellor, said the school was most concerned Tuesday about safety issues, but also wanted to preserve access to the recruiters for students who wanted to speak with them, while still allowing protesting students their right to free speech.

Kliger said officials had tried to engage the anti-war student group in discussions in the weeks leading up to the fair. But when talks broke down, officials began privately hoping for rain and brought in extra police.

The rain probably accounted for a decidedly smaller turnout — about 100 students compared with about 300 a year earlier.

Still, the Army’s Griffin said he sensed that some of the students were “looking for action” and decided to pack up their table before things got out of hand and someone got injured.

Students Against War members said they were pleased that their counter-recruiting effort forced the military personnel off campus, at least for the time being.

“We’re saying it’s not OK to recruit on high school campuses, it’s not OK to recruit on university campuses,” Marla Zubel, a UC Santa Cruz senior and member of Students Against War, said. “In order to stop the war, you have to make it more difficult to wage war.”

Los Angeles Times – April 12, 2006

Beverage Creates a Buzz
Coca-Sek, bottled by a Colombian tribe, gets its kick from coca leaves. The not-so-soft drink has stirred debate about drugs and sovereignty.
By Chris Kraul
Times Staff Writer

INZA, Colombia — Call it the “Real Thing.”

Indians in this remote mountain village in southern Colombia are marketing a particularly refreshing soft drink that harks back to Coca-Cola’s original formula, when “coca” was in the name for a reason.

Advertising posters here describe the carbonated, citrus-flavored Coca-Sek as “more than an energizer” — a buzz that just might be provided by a key ingredient, a syrup produced by boiling coca leaves.

Since January, the Nasa indigenous community has been offering the soft drink locally and in neighboring Popayan, where it is bottled. By the end of the year, the Nasa hope to sell Coca-Sek nationwide, targeting the same consumers who drink Gatorade or Red Bull, both highly popular with Colombians.

For six years, the Nasa have been quietly selling coca-flavored cookies, aromatic teas, wines and ointments at informal sidewalk stalls and in health food stores. They say they’re trying to capitalize on a plentiful resource — and remove the stigma from a leaf that for them is sacred.

Cocaine, the highly concentrated form of the leaf’s alkaloid extracted using solvents and other chemicals, is “foreign to our culture and is an invention of Western man,” said Gelmis Chate, president of the Nasa council here.

But consumption of coca leaves by chewing them or by using them in food or tea is an ancient custom. The 4,000 indigenous families in this region typically grow several coca plants on their farms for personal use, a right guaranteed by Colombian law.

For Abraham Cuello, 50, the half-dozen coca plants sprouting among his banana, coffee, mango and papaya trees have as much mystic as alimentary value. “They protect my farm and all that I grow,” he said as he pulled the bright green leaves from an 8-foot coca plant.

The Nasa’s coca cookies and teas attracted little attention, but the launch of Coca-Sek has ignited controversy in a country where Washington has spent $4 billion since 1999 combating the drug trade and terrorism.

The reasons are myriad: the tribe’s market ambitions for the beverage; the inevitable comparisons with the original Coke, which dropped cocaine from its formula in 1905; and the recent election of Bolivian President Evo Morales, an indigenous coca grower who supports the production of legitimate coca products.

Coca-Sek has also reopened a debate over the limits of the sovereignty that indigenous groups in Colombia and other nations are afforded. The Nasa claim a sovereign right to commercialize the soft drink and other coca products, even though the law permitting its use clearly limits it to traditional, not commercial, ends.

Indigenous tribes elsewhere in the Andean region also are trying to mainstream the leaf, trumpeting its nutritive and painkilling value. Morales, who says he will end coca eradication efforts in Bolivia, promotes coca-based yogurt, soap, bread and tea. He is appealing to the United Nations to drop the coca plant’s designation as a poisonous substance, which would open the way to exports.

In Peru, a state-owned monopoly called Enaco was formed to create a legitimate market for coca leaves and channel them into the production of toothpaste, topical ointments to treat arthritis, tea and energizer drinks such as Coca-Sek. Nationalist candidate Ollanta Humala, who led Peru’s presidential vote Sunday, promised to push for legalization of coca if elected.

In Colombia, the drive to make legitimate products from the coca leaf is being led by the Calderas reservation, one of half a dozen Nasa communities clustered around Inza. The community pays $15 for each 30-pound bag of coca leaves. Each bag makes enough syrup to produce 300 bottles of Coca-Sek.

That price tops the $12 a bag paid by local drug traffickers, who are always willing to buy leaves, said David Curtidor, who helps manage the soft drink business and touts the beverage as a weapon in the war on drugs. “Each leaf that goes to making the drink is one leaf less for the narcos,” Curtidor said.

Chewing coca leaves, which depresses the central nervous system, has enabled Indians to soften the effects of hunger, hard work and high altitude for centuries. Franky Rios, the engineer at Popayan’s La Reina bottling plant who oversees the production of the beverage, said Coca-Sek delivers the various vitamins and minerals, including calcium, potassium and magnesium, found in the coca leaf.

“It’s better than Gatorade,” he said.

Jim Bauml, senior biologist at the Los Angeles County Arboretum, said coca leaf boosters might be on to something. “There is literature out there that shows there is a tremendous nutritive value in the leaf itself,” he said. “How much of that is released by chewing or other extraction methods isn’t clear, but it’s there potentially.”

A bonus is the spiritual power that the Nasa people believe resides in coca. In this valley that is also the site of the Tierradentro prehistoric burial caves, one of Colombia’s most important archeological zones, evidence of that belief is seen in many of the stone statues unearthed in recent years. Several of the carved human forms are holding cuetanderas, the woven bags that the Nasa even today use to carry their coca leaves for chewing.

“Coca permits man to communicate with nature, and nature with man,” said Fabiola Pinacue, a Nasa who helps run the coca-based businesses and is a former mayor of Paez, a village 15 miles north of Inza.

But the Nasa and other indigenous communities are up against hardened attitudes. Even European Union and Japanese charitable groups that have funded other economic initiatives in Inza, including the online sales of locally grown organic coffee, want no part of underwriting Coca-Sek or any other coca-based product, said Chate, the Nasa council president.

Maybe it’s because coca is such a freighted term — and the target of the Plan Colombia crop eradication program that is funded by the United States and supported by the United Nations. (Indigenous reservations are exempt from spraying.)

Although the coca-based energizer drink and the aromatic teas contain relatively small amounts of the cocaine alkaloid, ingesting great amounts could produce the same effect as that from the refined powder, said Greg Thompson, an associate professor of clinical pharmacy at USC.

“There are cases of people dipping 80 coca teabags into a teapot and getting classic cocaine toxicity from drinking it,” Thompson said.

The Nasa say that normal use of their products is perfectly safe. “The world’s mind is closed to the good uses of the leaf,” Chate said. “We’re trying to show that we can make value-added products that aren’t a danger to anyone.”

But the Nasa may be on a collision course with the Colombian government, which has yet to sanction Coca-Sek. A top official with the Colombian equivalent of the Drug Enforcement Administration said the government’s concern was that coca leaves ostensibly destined for the soft drink operation would somehow be diverted to drug traffickers.

“The law perfectly recognizes that coca is important to their religious ceremonies,” said the official, who asked not to be identified, citing the political sensitivity of the issue. “But it doesn’t talk about commercial ends, and that’s a confusion that needs to be clarified.”

The government threatened to shut down the Popayan bottling plant in February and confiscate all the bottles. The Nasa asked the national council of indigenous tribes, which represents 1.2 million people, to issue a permit, insisting that was all the permission they needed.

This being an election year, the government quickly backed off.

Jorge Ronderos, a sociology professor at Caldas University in the Colombian city of Manizales and an expert on coca’s place in indigenous culture, thinks Western governments have needlessly demonized the coca leaf.

“All that is lacking is a declaration that it is a terrorist plant,” Ronderos said.

An official with the state Health Department where the Popayan bottling plant is located said the government’s only interest was ensuring that the soft drink was safe. He said the beverage had not undergone the proper testing and was not properly labeled.

“If people get sick, they are going to come after me,” the official said.

The Nasa are producing about 8,000 bottles of Coca-Sek a week, up from 3,000 initially. They think they can easily market double that number if they can penetrate Colombia’s urban markets.

Meanwhile, sales are brisk. The beverage isn’t yet turning a profit — production is financed with proceeds from the coca-flavored aromatic teas, which have been sold since 1999. Coca-Sek’s survival as a product may hinge on finding a larger bottling plant closer to big cities such as Bogota or Medellin.

None of Colombia’s big bottlers is lining up so far to produce Coca-Sek, but Curtidor believes it’s not because of any stigma attached to coca leaves.

“They don’t want the competition,” he said.

*

Andres D’Alessandro of The Times’ Buenos Aires Bureau and special correspondent Adriana Leon in Lima, Peru, contributed to this report.