git rebase syntax question

I am missing something in the git rebase syntax ... am simply trying to remove some "empty" merge messages from my tree like:

commit 7538943ddf992b6ee5ec21d460f1eecc0afdb6f3
Merge: 9f73763... bbab152...
Author: Steve French <[email protected]>
Date: Fri Aug 11 17:46:20 2006 +0000

Merge ../cifs-tmp/

and reorder the commits so my commits that are not in the parent are the most recent

The git repository is cloned from /pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git and has one branch and history like

        ...->A->MyCommits->B->MoreOfMyCommits->C->EmptyMergeMessages
and I want to make my master look like
        ...->A->B->C->MyCommits->MoreOfMyCommits

where "MyCommits" and "MoreOfMyCommits" are not in 2.6.18-rc4 yet, and A, B, and C are the parent's (mainline kernel) commits (e.g. A is up to about 2.6.18-rc1, B are those between rc1 and rc3, C would be rc4 and later etc.)

I tried doing the obvious
"git rebase master"
but that appears to be a no op
stevef@smf-t41p:~/cifs-2.6> git-rebase master
Current branch master is up to date.
stevef@smf-t41p:~/cifs-2.6> git-rebase origin
Current branch master is up to date.

How does one do this?

Since A, B, and C are from upstream, they should still be linked directly together. So your history is probably more like this:
MyCommits--Merge--MoreOfMyCommits--EmptyMergeMessage
/ / /
A----------B-----------------------C

You are already merged with master, so rebase doesn't think there is anything to do. You will have to rebase each of your merged segments onto a new rebase branch:
# Go back to just before the first merge...

  $ git-branch commits1 Merge^
  # And add all of C..commits1 on top of C
  $ git-rebase C commits1
  # Now we go back for the second merge...
  $ git-branch commits2 EmptyMergeMessage^
  # And add all of that on top of our previous work
  $ git-rebase commits1 commits2
  # At this point commits2 has A->B->C->MyCommits->MoreOfMyCommits.
  # Now we can clean things up, making master the new desired branch.
  $ git-checkout master
  $ git-reset --hard commits2
  $ git-branch -d commits1 commits2
  $ git-prune

I'm not sure if there's a simpler way to do it. Obviously if you do the rebase as you go along (instead of merging) it's much easier.

-Peff