More top brass blast Rumsfeld

In mid-April, under fire from a half-dozen retired U.S. generals for broad failures in Iraq, the Bush White House dispatched Donald Rumsfeld to the front lines of the American heartland. The secretary of defense appeared on talk radio host Rush Limbaugh's nationally syndicated show to fight back against the decorated military commanders who called for his resignation.

"The sharper the criticism comes, sometimes the sharper the defense comes from people who don't agree with the critics," Rumsfeld told Limbaugh during the April 17 interview. He dismissed the barrage of reproach, suggesting that "the same kinds of criticism" had come and gone during all major American wars, from the Revolutionary War to Vietnam. "This, too, will pass," Rumsfeld said.

But the sharp disapproval aired by the retired generals is, by many counts, extraordinary.