Word: memoed
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Rumsfeld has lately kept busy strewing political wreckage on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. First, he wrote a frank memo about the war on terrorism that was at odds with much of the Administration's public spin for the past several months. Then he alienated the one person, apart from Bush, on whom the Pentagon most relies for sustenance--Virginia Senator John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. A former Navy Secretary, Warner went to the Senate floor to complain that Rumsfeld had in effect ignored his request for an investigation into Lieut. General William "Jerry" Boykin...
Baroque as it was, that soap opera was merely a warm-up. On Oct. 16 Rumsfeld wrote a memo titled "Global War on Terrorism" that was quickly leaked to reporters. The memo, first reported by USA Today, reads like a report card for the Bush team since 9/11, and the marks aren't great. "We are having mixed results with al-Qaeda, although we have put considerable pressure on them--nonetheless, a great many remain at large ... we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing killing or deterring...
White House officials argued that Rumsfeld had merely raised issues he had raised before, and to an extent that was true. This was not the first time that Rumsfeld had asked if the government needed to remake itself against a new enemy. But Rumsfeld's memo--for an Administration that had been touting its achievements overseas relentlessly for months--read like a grim descant of doubt at odds with the more optimistic line peddled almost daily to the public. A Bush aide searched for a silver lining: "If we were smart, we would take advantage of this to concede...
Rumsfeld insisted that he had not leaked the memo himself. But it is widely believed inside the Pentagon that he was content to see it disclosed; the debate is much more about why. One officer explained that Rumsfeld wanted to make it clear that he didn't really believe his own rose-colored rhetoric. Another said he was reasserting his authority over Iraq policy. But perhaps the savviest explanation is also the simplest. The U.S. is spending close to $500 billion a year on defense, at home and abroad, yet Americans feel only slightly safer. Some Bush hard-liners share...
...Rumsfeld, he has been down before and has usually fought his way back to grinning, redoubtable prominence. You can almost hear him writing that memo now, and it would sound a lot like the one leaked last week: "Is our current situation such that, 'The harder we work, the behinder we get?' Do we need a new organization? What else should we be considering?" --With reporting by Matthew Cooper, John F. Dickerson and Mark Thompson/Washington