Word: rumsfeldism
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Next stop Tehran? Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who backs a policy of regime-change in in Iran, on Tuesday charged that the country is harboring al-Qaeda members, trying to remake Iraq in its own image (thus undermining U.S. efforts to do the same) and developing nuclear weapons. Sound familiar? It should; similar charges were used to justify the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and the fact that Rumsfeld is making them in the wake of a Bush administration decision to end high-level back-channel talks with Tehran and on the eve of a reported White House policy review...
...Rumsfeld would have a tough time convincing even the most loyal of U.S. allies to go to war with Iran - and not only because almost two months after Saddam's overthrow, no evidence has yet emerged to conclusively validate the WMD and al-Qaeda charges against Iraq. Even the Bush administration's most loyal ally, Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, may be inclined to take a more nuanced view than Rumsfeld. Britain does, after all, maintain diplomatic ties with Tehran and has engaged actively with Iran in the hope of promoting the country's reform movement...
...deem, as Rumsfeld does, calls from some Iraqi Shiite clergy for a theocratic government in Baghdad as signs of Iranian meddling is simplistic. The most ardent advocates of that view are followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, who remained inside Iraq under Saddam's repression and are disdainful of rivals who chose exile in Iran. They may have some backing from elements in Iran, but their movement is essentially homegrown. By contrast, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which had been based in Tehran for the past 23 years and whose militia was trained by Iran's hard...
...Measured against the complex reality, Rumsfeld's allegations that Iran is meddling in Iraq and harboring al-Qaeda are unlikely to galvanize much by way of international action against Tehran. But the issue of nuclear weapons is different. If Washington can prove that Tehran is, indeed, planning to use its Russian-built nuclear reactors to create weapons, the U.S. would have a strong case for international action against Iran. Tehran swears it has no plans to develop nuclear weapons, and that it has played open cards with the International Atomic Energy Agency. But the U.S. and some of its allies...
...West Point, Hunt had been first in his class and later served on the staff of the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. He was a man who paid appropriate attention to morale, logistics, supplies and technology. If, like me, you listened to General Tommy Franks and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld blather on about their "plan" during the Iraq war and wondered what such a thing might look like, then you should read Appendix III of Hunt's book, which in nine crisp pages ("Memorandum: Basis for Planning") shows why good soldiers are not - cannot be - fools...