Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry leans back in an oversized black leather seat aboard his red, white and blue campaign plane and muses about his brief naval career.

What he liked most, he says, was “the camaraderie, the responsibility, the no-holds-barred commitment … you loved each other.”

That, in a nutshell, is what makes him different from President Bush, he says. It’s what the president doesn’t get.

“In my judgment, most units over there are not engaged in the kinds of activities where that is critical,” he said. “If you are engaged on the front line in a battle or some particular mission, you can make that argument, but if it is a routine patrol, I don’t think that is particularly persuasive when you make a commitment to somebody and they have a contract, in essence, saying this is the length of service.”

Forcing service members to remain in the military is “counter to good leadership,” he said, and vowed he would halt the practice “in a matter of months.”

Kerry credited Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with developing some good ideas on transformation, but faulted him for failing to follow through on those ideas. In fact, Kerry saved his sharpest criticism for Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

“I think there’s a serious question as to why Rumsfeld and any of them are still around,” Kerry said. “When you miscalculate in war as badly as they have miscalculated, when you don’t have equipment that you’re supposed to have, when you short the number of troops you should have, when you don’t even calculate the postwar process accurately, when you willfully refuse to look at plans drawn up by others in order to do this right, it’s beyond negligence. When you pass off looting as a minor happening, it’s beyond me.”

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-3048167.php