Word: rumsfeld
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...Pentagon officials whether Rumsfeld is a strategic or a tactical thinker, and they reply yes. For every blue-sky conversation in Rumsfeld's office about, say, the limits of technology, there is another about ensuring that Pentagon officials adhere to ethics rules when accepting honorary gifts from foreign leaders. Given that depth of field and Rumsfeld's deft handling of the war, it's hard to escape the question, Where was he on the peace? How could a man with trifocal vision fail to see that the peace would need as much planning as the war? As a senior Pentagon...
Those questions are the biggest mystery of Rumsfeld's year. Part of the problem, ironically, was the brilliant war plan itself. Rumsfeld and Franks so stripped down the invasion force for speed that the occupation army that came out the other end was too small for the job of peacekeeping. The military suddenly found itself having to protect banks, arms dumps, even gas stations, with just a handful of divisions. But there were other problems too. Administration officials, including some close to Rumsfeld, were suffused with the convenient belief that Iraqis would welcome the U.S. as a liberator the moment...
...Rumsfeld would never admit that he made a mistake, says an aide, who adds, "That's a good thing when selling a policy or a war. But if the choice turns out to be wrong, he probably won't acknowledge it until it's turned into a disaster...
...Indeed, Rumsfeld answers the question of whether he misjudged the postwar challenges with a trademark Rumination. "Let me give you a perspective," he says. "You come into these jobs--there's not a lot of time for reflection--you better know two-thirds of the things you're gonna need to know when you get in here, 'cause you're not going to have time to learn three-quarters. You can learn an eighth or a quarter or a third, but you can't learn it all. And the same thing is true in a big, massive project like...
...this case, that somebody was Jay Garner, a retired three star Rumsfeld knew since the two had worked together studying U.S. space policy three years before. This was probably Rumsfeld's first misstep: giving a retired general the job of organizing postwar Iraq--a job in which Garner would have to compete for money and manpower with a dozen other active-duty four-star generals. Rumsfeld didn't have a lot of great options. The Pentagon doesn't have an agency for peacekeeping or nation building or anything in between, and neither the military nor the White House regarded those...