Word: rumsfelds
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...There is a small, but not insignificant, faction in the U.S. military that thinks the only way to stabilize Baghdad is to forcibly disarm al-Sadr's militia. The Hizballah story may have been unofficial, second-tier military lobbying. And the Hadley memo? "A parting gift from Don Rumsfeld," guessed an Iraq expert with close ties to the White House. "He's the only one who had access and motivation. The memo proves his point: it's the political process, not the military operation, that's the problem in Iraq." Would Rumsfeld be so spiteful as to embarrass the President...
...history of long-overdue u-turns. He waited until he woke up, hungover, one morning at age 40 before giving up booze cold. He fought the idea of a homeland-security agency for eight months after 9/11 and then scampered aboard and called it his idea. He dumped Donald Rumsfeld last month as Defense Secretary, although lawmakers and even some generals had been calling for his head since 2005. Bush's biggest reversals usually come after months--even years--of stubborn resistance, when just about everyone has given up on his having any second thoughts at all. That's always...
...State Condoleezza Rice. Would she propose the commission to the President? After some hesitation, Rice agreed, but she made one request: the commission had to look forward, not backward, in part because she knew the dysfunctional Bush foreign policy operation, tilted as it was so heavily along the Cheney-Rumsfeld axis, would not permit, much less sustain, scrutiny. As the trio departed, a Rice aide asked one of her suitors not to inform anyone at the Pentagon that chairmen had been chosen and the study group was moving forward. If Rumsfeld was alerted to the study group's potential impact...
...would be a holdout on the final deal. In October, as the number of casualties in Iraq exploded, public support for Bush dropped through the floor. When Democrats swept the November elections, aides to several panelists told TIME that the commission would have more room to make sweeping proposals. Rumsfeld's resignation the next day cemented that feeling--which is not to say the commission thought it had any perfect solutions. "We did not think there were any good options on Iraq," one of the experts told TIME. "What we're really looking at are less-bad options...
...instead of making things easier, the elections actually made them harder. After Bush replaced Rumsfeld with Robert Gates, a member of the Baker-Hamilton commission who had served the first President Bush as head of the CIA, the psychoanalysis rampant in the media about Daddy's team coming back to save the prodigal son steamed everyone at the White House, from the President on down, and led the Administration to dig in its heels. Says a Baker confidant: "Everything that happened on Election Day made for extra work." It wasn't long before senior Administration officials were whispering that...