Word: rumsfeld
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...Iraq came into his sights, Rumsfeld pressed Franks to shrink the invasion force, speed the drive to Baghdad and forget about the more traditional, mile-by-bloody-mile invasion tactics that meant stopping at every step to consolidate the coalition's gains. Rumsfeld sold the war in a series of almost daily Pentagon briefings that centered not on the risks of besieging Baghdad but on the risks of not doing so. "We just suffered 3,000 dead in Sept. 11," he mused during a television interview in early February. "If the U.S. were to experience a Sept. 11 with...
When they were done, Rumsfeld and Franks invaded a nation 25 times the size of nearby Kuwait, with roughly half the troops used in 1991--a revolution in the way the U.S. fights wars. Baghdad fell in 21 days, and the U.S. suffered 103 combat fatalities. The plan, according to retired Marine Lieut. Colonel Jay Farrar, "proved to the Army that it can go in lighter and sustain itself longer than it ever imagined...
Still, as it took shape, Rumsfeld left his marks on the war plan--and then slapped a new coat of paint on the thing when he was done. Rumsfeld's notion was to do more--and do it faster and deadlier--with less. So he mixed in a larger number of special forces than the Army had originally envisioned, giving the commandos a central role. He shortened the soften-'em-up air war to just a few days instead of the more traditional few weeks. But the final surprise belonged to Franks: he opted to begin the ground war before...
...where Rumsfeld really jerked the Army's chain was in reversing the long-held faith that the U.S. must apply overwhelming power overseas--or none at all. That doctrine, named after Secretary of State Colin Powell, was one of the lessons taken away by the men who fought as young officers in Vietnam. When those lieutenants and captains ripened into colonels and generals, they made the all-or-nothing Army the only kind America would field. By the early 1990s, as the U.S. began to face peskier enemies overseas, the doctrine began to unravel. Discussing how to apply force...
...Rumsfeld too saw the problem when he returned to the Pentagon after a 24year absence. He told Bush in early 2001 that the U.S. should stop being afraid of "leaning" into problems overseas, shouldn't shy away from getting involved. He believed the Powell doctrine gave a President fewer, not more options. He also recognized that the Pentagon he had run at the age of 43 for Gerald Ford in 1976 had not changed very much since then. His initial campaign to remake the Pentagon by shrinking the military went nowhere until 9/11. But after that, there was no stopping...