Gates Stresses Privacy in Chain of Command

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates appeared to subtly rebuke America’s top commander in Afghanistan on Monday for publicly speaking out against calls for scaling back the war effort there.
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“And speaking for the Department of Defense,” Mr. Gates said, “once the commander in chief makes his decisions, we will salute and execute those decisions faithfully and to the best of our ability.”

The secretary’s remarks seemed to be fallout from Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s speech last week in London, in which the general rejected suggestions for limiting the campaign against the Taliban and focusing more on hunting down Al Qaeda members.

Mr. Gates’s remarks on Monday were eyebrow-raising, in that they were spoken without prompting at a meeting of the Association of the United States Army, which describes itself as a private, nonprofit educational organization that supports active-duty service members, retirees, civilians and others associated with the Army.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/world/06gates.html?hp

Good! I hope Gates is keeping an eye on the lot of them!