Welcome to a community supported and guest-produced edition of the best of the left podcast, with clips

today from the Rachel Matto Show, Countdown with Keith Olberman and the Randy Rhodes Show.

I have always said that I will listen to the requests of our commanders on the ground.

Mr. President, you did not listen. You continue to pursue a failed strategy that is breaking our great

Army and Marine Corps. I left the Army in protest in order to speak out. Mr. President, you have

placed our nation in peril. Our only hope is that Congress will act now to protect our fighting men and women.

In the Army, he has since become a vocal opponent of the war, the way it's being managed. Retired Major General John Batista joins us on the phone from upstate New York.

General, thank you very much for joining us. Rachel, thank you. It's good to be with you.

When you said you quit in protest, what do you mean? Can you describe that?

In the summer of 2005, Rachel, I made the gut wrenching decision to turn my back on an institution that I loved

and that I had served 31 years, two-time combat veteran, expensive service in the Balkans, Bosnia and Kosovo.

But I came to the realization that I could do more good for my soldiers and their families in a suit and tie

than I could wearing the uniform of the United States. I love this country and I stepped out of the military in order to speak out about the outrageous way this country went to war in March of 2003.

How bright is the line between what you can say in uniform and what you can't say in uniform?

When you made that decision, when you realized that in a suit and tie, you could do the things that you wanted to do that.

You couldn't have done in uniform. What's the line there? What changes in terms of what you really are allowed to do?

Rachel, it's a solid line. Inside the military, you serve, you certainly speak out within the organization and you trust that your senior leaders pass that information up the chain of command.

But you don't step outside that line and speak out against the military. It's a violation of the uniform code of military justice to do so.

In order to speak out, you need to cross the line and shift from being a military officer to a civilian.

At that point, the shackles are up and you can speak.

Do you believe that part of the blame for where we are now and for what's gone wrong in terms of our Iraq policy and what we're doing in Iraq now?

Do you think that the blame is shared by senior military officers and by the civilian leadership, by the Bush administration?

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