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[sgtclub]

Several on this board have been passing along this myth (Ty, SAM), so I'm wondering what the lefty blogs have to say about this.

Kerry is voicing inaccurate statements that have been repeated so often on the Internet, on radio talk shows and by campaign surrogates that they have come to be regarded as the truth -- for example, the explanation for how Eric Shinseki's long and distinguished military career ended.

Kerry picked up the story April 13 during a campaign event in Providence, R.I., declaring: "Gen. Shinseki said very clearly: We need 200,000 troops. And what happened to him? He was forced into early retirement." Kerry reiterated this last week at a Columbus, Ohio, press conference: "Gen. Shinseki told this country how many troops we'd need. The president retired him early for telling the truth."

That is not true, and even Bush critics in the Pentagon know it. The truth is that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, demanding control of the Army, collided with Shinseki on issues unrelated to Iraq. In March 2002, Rumsfeld announced that Shinseki's term as chief of staff would end as scheduled in June 2003 without extension -- an unprecedented action that made the general a lame duck. It was after that, not before it, on Feb. 25, 2003, that Shinseki told a Senate committee the U.S. would need "several hundred thousand" soldiers (not precisely 200,000) for Iraq occupation duty.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/r...20040930.shtml