Word: rumsfeld
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...What are we doing, why are we doing it, how long will we be doing it?" Rumsfeld asked last week, running through some key questions during a Pentagon briefing. "Are we doing it in a way we're pleased or disappointed with?" The Defense Secretary insists that all these questions still have happy answers. But he and his generals know battle plans are often the first casualties of battle. After weeks of bristling at complaints about the campaign's sluggishness, the Pentagon may have finally concluded that the best way to silence the grumbling is to heed it. Rumsfeld...
...chief complaints leveled at Rumsfeld and the Pentagon's strategists is that they failed to predict or prepare for the Taliban's ability to withstand an aerial assault. Western and Pakistani military officials openly hint that an American ground force may be required to remove the Taliban and install a successor government. Military commanders are exploring the idea of grabbing territory inside Afghanistan to use as a staging area for hit-and-run attacks against al-Qaeda. Seizing and holding an airstrip would involve as many as 15,000 troops, and there's little chance of inserting them before spring...
...halting rhythm of the military operation has complicated the Pentagon's sales effort and exposed some early assessments as naively optimistic. Nonetheless, the American public's support has stayed aloft. "It's not a tough sell right now," says a top Rumsfeld aide. "If you had an election on the war in America, we'd win it hands down because the wounds are fresh. But they won't be fresh six months from...
...handicap for this Administration is that it has no credible uniformed stalwart to make the case for the war on a daily basis-as Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf did during the Gulf War. And so the sober, 69-year-old Rumsfeld has become the Administration's go-to guy. With Dick Cheney mostly at his undisclosed location, Rumsfeld is the government's resident grownup, an acerbic spokesman who can convey condescension and playfulness in the same breath, as he did last week when chiding a reporter for "beginning with an illogical premise and proceeding perfectly logically to an illogical...
...Rumsfeld's aides say he is unruffled by criticism of the war's progress, in part because it has come from all sides. "There are starting to be some questions, like [Senator Joseph] Biden suggesting we risk being viewed as a high-tech bully and McCain wanting us to do more," says a top adviser. "So we're in the middle, which is a pretty good place to be." But the disgruntlement impressed Rumsfeld enough for him to devote much of his briefing Thursday to a history lesson on the deliberate pace of previous U.S. wars, and to pointedly remind...