April 20, 2006

TIMES HUMOR: BOROWITZ REPORT

Attempt to muzzle critics, generals suspect

One day after six prominent retired generals called for his resignation, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered all six of them back to active duty.

"The time has come for these so-called retired generals to start spending less time with their families," Secretary Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon press briefing.

The Defense Secretary said that the six generals would be returned to active duty "at once" and pressed into service in Iraq.

"We will be parachuting all six of them into Baghdad Monday at dawn," Secretary Rumsfeld said. "And we will have body armor ready for them by June 2007."

The Defense Secretary said that with the U.S.'s military manpower stretched to the limit in Iraq and Afghanistan, returning retired generals to active duty was the simplest way to make up for the shortfall.

"If we un-retire enough of these folks, why, we won't need a draft," he chuckled.

Retired Major General John Batiste, who commanded the Army's 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, said that he would gladly return to Iraq as ordered, but said that the decision to restore the six Rumsfeld critics to active duty "seemed a little bit fishy to me, timing-wise."

For his part, Secretary Rumsfeld said the move to un-retire the generals had nothing to do with their criticism of him, "They said we didn't have enough boots on the ground, and now we have 12 more boots on the ground."

Elsewhere, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that a leading cause of injury to infants is Britney Spears.

For more from Andy Borowitz go to www.borowitzreport.com. Andy Borowitz is a nationally syndicated humor columnist whose work can be found in Newsweek and other publications.