Thread: Rummy dug own grave

Afghan war's architect done in by Iraq mess & harsh style
BY RICHARD SISK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON - Donald Rumsfeld went from rock-star status in Afghanistan to the rock heap of failure in Iraq without grasping that he had become the problem, not the solution.
He denied the bargain-basement size of the Iraq invasion force was his idea, rebuffed efforts by his officers to discuss post-invasion plans, kept State Department experts out of Iraq and ignored Iraq administrator Paul Bremer's pleas for more troops.
His prickly style rankled generals, Capitol Hill mandarins and even colleagues. According to Bob Woodward's new book, he refused to return Secretary of State Rice's phone calls and ignored an order from Bush relayed by then-White House chief of staff Andrew Card until he heard it from the commander-in-chief himself.
Even as President Bush ushered him out the Oval Office door yesterday with three pats on the back, Rumsfeld resorted to his familiar role of playing the noble victim.
He paraphrased Winston Churchill: "I have benefited greatly from criticism, and at no time have I suffered a lack thereof."
Iraq and the war on terror were misunderstood and, by inference, so was his part in overseeing the U.S. response. The war "is not well-known, it is complex for people to comprehend," Rumsfeld said, but the record argued otherwise.
Rumsfeld, 74, the oldest and longest-serving Pentagon chief, was a regular on the newsweekly covers when Afghanistan seemingly was subdued in the fall of 2001.
He had devastated Al Qaeda and the Taliban with air strikes directed by small squads of ground troops without suffering a combat death. Osama Bin Laden had escaped a botched plan to trap him, but that was overlooked.
Then came Bush's decision to go after Saddam Hussein and his supposed weapons of mass destruction.
Rumsfeld ignored the pleas of the uniformed military for more troops in the invasion. When Iraqis went on a looting rampage after the fall of Baghdad, Rumsfeld snapped that "stuff happens."
He belabored the brass with memos he called "snowflakes," but the public began to turn when he flippantly dismissed the complaint of a young sergeant about the "hillbilly" armor he had to slap on his vehicles.
"You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want," Rumsfeld said.
Rumsfeld twice offered to resign during the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, but Bush rejected the offers to avoid antagonizing the GOP base that could not hold off the Democrats' Tuesday gains.
Rumsfeld's political usefulness was gone, and so was he. "The secretary of defense must be a man of vision who can see threats still over the horizon, and prepare our nation to meet them," Bush said. Rumsfeld no longer fit the bill. Rumsfeld had envisioned getting the boot in his "Rumsfeld's Rules," a list of bromides for executives he had written over the years. "Always be able to resign," Rumsfeld wrote. "It will improve your value to the President and do wonders for your performance."

Originally published on November 9, 2006

Sorry I can't contribute to your thread. *sniffle*