Word: rumsfeldism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...McCain. "Let's get on with it." Fissures in the international coalition are becoming visible, with Europeans encountering more hostile public opinion. In Britain support for the war has slipped from 74% to 62% in two weeks. "The carping takes a toll," says an aide to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, "especially if you don't have any Iwo Jimas to point to-and we don't have...
...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...
...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...
...Still, the pundits' concern may be understandable. Last week, Rumsfeld told USA Today that the military could not be certain that Osama bin Laden would be captured or killed, but that the Taliban would certainly fall. (In a later corrective, he emphasized that the U.S. expects to get its man.) What was significant in those remarks was that toppling the Taliban appears to have become the primary goal and the snaring of bin Laden a bonus. And it has become clear after almost a month of bombing that the Taliban may be able to survive the current level...