Shalikashvili’s condition still guarded

FORT LEWIS, Wash. – Retired Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Clinton administration, remained in guarded condition Tuesday at an Army hospital here, a spokesman said.

Friends and hospital officials said Shalikashvili suffered a brain hemorrhage, The News Tribune of Tacoma reported Tuesday.

Shalikashvili, 68, entered Madigan Army Medical Center at 11 a.m. Saturday. The family is requesting that no more information be released, spokesman Mike Meines said Monday.

Bill Harrison, a retired lieutenant general, said his friend also was hospitalized at Madigan about a month ago after suffering a mild stroke.

The former NATO supreme allied commander recovered and spoke at the Democratic National Convention in July, endorsing John Kerry for president.

“I do not stand here as a political figure,” he told the convention. “Rather, I am here as an old soldier and a new Democrat.”

Shalikashvili served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the Clinton administration from 1993, the year Clinton took office, until September 1997, when the general retired from the Army.

At a retirement gathering honoring Shalikashvili, then-President Clinton said it was the general who made recommendations that led to U.S. troops being sent to a number of post-Cold War hotspots including Haiti, Rwanda, Bosnia and the Persian Gulf.