Word: rumsfelds
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...days, Rumsfeld might have been called the Secretary of War, and it would have better fit his style and sensibility. To be in his presence or, worse, in his employ is to risk being lulled, lured, ambushed, bludgeoned and, always, conquered in the end. "It's the wrestler in him," says a former Pentagon aide. "It's how he thinks. It's all about positioning and sizing you up. It's there every time you meet him. He's friendly; he's got that toothy grin going. But then it's like a light switch is thrown...
...tempting to see Rumsfeld as an emblem of war itself, like Achilles or Ajax, lost in the calm, found in the fray. He is always fighting, always feinting, ever in conflict with something or someone or some idea. He's that way even when there's not much to fight about. Literal to a fault, Rumsfeld can spend a morning tangling over the interpretation of a poorly chosen word. He goes through periods when he takes on even friendly Senators and Representatives for sport. Devoted to trifocals, he seems to prefer to see things in conflict. You sometimes...
...session with Odierno in Kirkuk was vintage Rumsfeld, and Odierno, a rising star inside the Army, passed the test easily. "When it happens to someone who can't hold his own against the boss," says an aide, "you just want someone else to come along and put him out of his misery." Rumsfeld laughs at this report when he hears it a few days later. "I was doing my thing," he says of that day in Kirkuk. "It's what I do all day, every day." Rumsfeld doesn't have a name for his habit of withering cross-examination...
What feels like sport to Rumsfeld is more like a blood sport to those who have to face him. They describe a man who "listens aggressively," who wants to watch you take a punch and see how you react. "He really does want to smack you," says an aide. "From that, he thinks, 'I will learn something I don't know and you weren't planning to teach me.' The truth might not tumble out of you otherwise...
...series of such back-and-forth sessions that Rumsfeld crafted the war on Iraq. Normally, combatant commanders like former Centcom chief General Tommy Franks would take their plans to Washington for quick approval; under Rumsfeld, Franks had to redraw them repeatedly. Other generals were alarmed to see a Defense Secretary get so far down in the weeds of a military operation. Not since Robert McNamara's Pentagon had civilian authority reached so deeply into the order of battle. Both men played down this back-and-forth at the time. Franks has since told his fellow generals that the early sparring...