Word: rumsfelds
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Warner and Rumsfeld tried to patch things up later over sandwiches at Rumsfeld's office. But what's really eating Republicans isn't just Rumsfeld's manners; it's his war. It was Rumsfeld who ordered his reluctant generals to keep the U.S. invasion force relatively small last winter in order to shorten the war--though that has left the U.S. with what many believe is an occupying army too small to pacify, disarm and rebuild the fractured Iraqi nation. Five Americans died in combat last week, and the Baghdad hotel where Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, was staying came...
...understand what Rumsfeld is up to now unless you can picture the wringer he has just been through. Many lawmakers returned from summer vacation lugging complaints from voters about the mess in Iraq. Bush's polls began to fall, and to halt the slide, the White House ran to the U.N., ostensibly to get help with troops and money but really to calm political anxieties at home. When that effort stalled, the White House tried a different tack: it leaked word to the New York Times that all Iraq policymaking was being centralized at the White House under National Security...
...then Rumsfeld spoiled the ploy. Instead of just keeping quiet and running things as he had before, he greeted the Rice leak with a loud Bronx cheer and suggested to foreign reporters that it wouldn't change much of anything at all, which of course was true. A White House official, tongue in cheek, explained Rumsfeld's remarks by saying, "The Secretary's charm offensive is well known...
Baroque as it was, that soap opera was merely a warm-up. On Oct. 16 Rumsfeld wrote a memo titled "Global War on Terrorism" that was quickly leaked to reporters. The memo, first reported by USA Today, reads like a report card for the Bush team since 9/11, and the marks aren't great. "We are having mixed results with al-Qaeda, although we have put considerable pressure on them--nonetheless, a great many remain at large ... we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing killing or deterring...
White House officials argued that Rumsfeld had merely raised issues he had raised before, and to an extent that was true. This was not the first time that Rumsfeld had asked if the government needed to remake itself against a new enemy. But Rumsfeld's memo--for an Administration that had been touting its achievements overseas relentlessly for months--read like a grim descant of doubt at odds with the more optimistic line peddled almost daily to the public. A Bush aide searched for a silver lining: "If we were smart, we would take advantage of this to concede...