Vice Chairman of Joint Chiefs Says He’ll Retire in August

[maddezmom]

Source: NYT

By THOM SHANKER
Published: June 2, 2007
WASHINGTON, June 1 — Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr., who as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has guided Pentagon efforts to rewrite strategy and streamline budgeting and procurement, said Friday that he would retire from the military in August.

Admiral Giambastiani said that after 37 years of military service, he wanted to spend more time with his family and pursue other ventures.

Known within the military as Admiral G., a nickname used even by President Bush, the four-star Navy officer served as NATO’s first supreme allied commander for transformation and as chief of the Joint Forces Command before being made vice chairman, the armed services’ second-highest-ranking officer, in August 2005. He also served previously as senior military assistant to Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary.

But Admiral Giambastiani, now 59, spent most of his career in the Navy’s submarine service, engaged in both conventional operations and some of the nation’s most secret undersea intelligence-gathering missions. In his time with the fleet, he served as commander of the entire submarine force in the Atlantic and also in positions for developing new undersea technologies.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/02/washington/02admiral.html?ref=washington

[calimary]

1. Why August, I wonder? Could it be that he wants to be unencumbered

by the "surge reevaluation month" - September, so he can comment freely about it (presumably to comment negatively)?

[williesgirl]

2. One more of *'s team bailing before the fire gets too hot.