June 13, 2003: Army Chief Retires after Public Rebuke by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz

A few months after being publicly, and humiliatingly, contradicted by his top civilian Pentagon bosses Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz (see February 27, 2003), Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki retires. Neither Rumsfeld nor Wolfowitz attend Shinseki’s retirement ceremony, a choice which many see as another public snubbing of the retiring general. Shinseki spends 20 minutes listing the people who had helped the Army during his tenure as Army chief of staff; Rumsfeld’s name is conspicuously absent from the listing. And in a veiled jab at his former boss, Shinseki says that “arrogance of power” is the worst substitute for true leadership. In another unusual move, Rumsfeld had already named Shinseki’s replacement, General Peter Schoomaker, nearly a year before Shinseki’s retirement. [Honolulu Advertiser, 6/13/2003; US News and World Report, 6/15/2003]