Rumsfeld Loses the Blame Game

Good article by Andrew Sullivan in the London Times from Sunday. Sullivan talks about two recent books on the Administration and Iraq, Fred Barnes' Bush biography and Paul Bremer's "My First Year in Iraq." Rumsfeld does not come out of either book looking good. Although I have to say, Bremer pointing fingers at Rumsfeld is a bit odd, since Bremer himself has a good deal to answer for, and although I haven't read his book yet, I doubt very much that he owns up to his massive failings in Iraq.

From the Times' piece:

Back in the spring of 2003 it had seemed obvious to most rational observers that we had too few troops to maintain order in Iraq. A mere 170,000 to control a country of 25m in a power vacuum was a joke. Towns and cities could be cleared of insurgents but never retained, because we had too few troops to stay put.

The borders were porous. We didnÂ’t have enough troops to secure the weapons sites that the war had been designed to eradicate. General (Eric K) Shinseki famously argued before the war that we needed 500,000 troops to do the job. He was fired. Many pro-Bush military analysts, besotted with Donald RumsfeldÂ’s vision of a lean, mean fighting machine, told us we knew nothing about military strategy. They planned on about 40,000 troops remaining a few months after the fall of Saddam. . . .

Back in Washington, according to Barnes’s pro-Bush book, the president found his weekly teleconferences with the generals irritatingly long. According to Barnes, “Bush liked crisp sessions without whining or complaints. Once he had to interrupt a discussion of troop rotation to say, ‘Stop the hand-wringing!’ ” This is not a management style designed to expose problems and solve them. It’s a style designed to squelch dissent. . . .

Rumsfeld had a fixed idea that a smaller military could accomplish anything, and had absolutely no sense of responsibility for the chaos his war plan had unleashed.

His famous “stuff happens” remark in response to the early looting in Baghdad stands as the leitmotif for his entire view of the war. While Colin Powell had insisted that once you invaded Iraq you were responsible for its security, Rumsfeld thought that the Iraqis should fend for themselves.

Some people believe that Bush will cut Rummy loose this year. I don't. I think he knows he needs to lightening rods like Rummy and Cheney out there to try and deflect from his mistakes.