Retired General Batiste has been in the news a bit lately for his criticism of Rumsfeld, but seeing his photo lately reminds me of a rather humorous anecdote that occurred during my deployment in 2004 under the 1st ID. You can read the story as I originally wrote it here:

http://armyadvice.org/blogs/armysteve/archive/2004/10/03/9259.aspx

That was as much contact as I had with General Batiste, but my experience (and I’m out now, so I can be honest) was that he was a good commander, so I have a lot of respect for what he (and other veteran generals) has to say.