Why start now?

Bush has never listened to his generals before, so it comes as no surprise that he's strongly endorsing Rummy, even with 6 retired generals, including 4 who served under Rummy in Iraq calling for him to step down + one Republican Senator.

All jokes aside, if 6 generals, knowing the negative impact on troop morale, citizen support, and positive impact of embolding the enemy, etc that coming out hard against the Secretary of Defense would have, still find it neccessary to go vocal on this, well, it makes me wonder how bad things have to be. If it were 6 extreme lefty dems, then I would tend to blow this off, but its not.

I also think it clearly shows that you can support the troops, want to succeed in Iraq, but still criticize the show. I believe Bush can fix this. But he will have to show the kind of courage and decisiveness he's lacked. Much like Linclon, he needs to make wholesale changes, promote quality, demote the incompetent, and get control of this. You can like someone and fire them. You can be a good friend and still do what's right for the nation. Lincoln took a beating when he changed generals in the middle of the Civil War, but it was the right move. Burns was getting clobbered, and Grant turned the war around.