So I guess I'm indifferent to Rumsfeld? I have strong criticisms of the man, but I also admire what he has accomplished. A couple times I have seen people say, "God, how can Republicans even stand this guy!"

Rumsfeld is just getting lambasted from all angles these days from everyone from McCain, to the media, to you guys. Very few people are out there defending him.

So why should I hate him? What makes Rumsfeld so bad? How do his actions in the past compare to those of past Secretary of Defense's. Because as I look at the past, I see some eerily similar criticism's of Clinton's Secretary of Defenses...especially Mr. Aspen.

Do you all share criticisms of other past Secretary of Defense's?

I don't want the same tired old info of "Rumsfeld shook hands with Saddam." I don't want to see the picture again. I just want some reserved information pertaining to the man, and well thought out opinions.

I think he's a smug, callous, old, washed-up douchebag.

You forgot 'Smug'

Fixed. Thanks Tom.

I was just begging for the picture to be posted...wasn't I. Come on guys, you two are particular are the most vocal against Rummy. Something more than three adjectives please.

What more needs to be said? He is what he is, and he demonstrates this practically every time he opens his mouth.

I think he tells the president what he wants to hear, instead of the truth. I think his idea of a small efficient army is a good idea, but not when you don't know who your enemy is. I think he is caught between a rock and a hard place between the military's failings and the promises made by the president, and our boys are dying because of it. I don't expect him to publicly criticize the president, but at some point he has to find middle ground.

This rings true with me (the last paragraph in the article is fantastically worded):

The Defense Secretary We Have

By William Kristol
Wednesday, December 15, 2004; Page A33

"As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."

-- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,


Actually, we have a pretty terrific Army. It's performed a lot better in this war than the secretary of defense has. President Bush has nonetheless decided to stick for now with the defense secretary we have, perhaps because he doesn't want to make a change until after the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections. But surely Don Rumsfeld is not the defense secretary Bush should want to have for the remainder of his second term.

Contrast the magnificent performance of our soldiers with the arrogant buck-passing of Rumsfeld. Begin with the rest of his answer to Spec. Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee Army National Guard:

"Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe -- it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment. I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they're working at it at a good clip."

So the Army is in charge. "They" are working at it. Rumsfeld? He happens to hang out in the same building: "I've talked a great deal about this with a team of people who've been working on it hard at the Pentagon. . . . And that is what the Army has been working on." Not "that is what we have been working on." Rather, "that is what the Army has been working on." The buck stops with the Army.

At least the topic of those conversations in the Pentagon isn't boring. Indeed, Rumsfeld assured the troops who have been cobbling together their own armor, "It's interesting." In fact, "if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up." Good point. Why have armor at all? Incidentally, can you imagine if John Kerry had made such a statement a couple of months ago? It would have been (rightly) a topic of scorn and derision among my fellow conservatives, and not just among conservatives.

Perhaps Rumsfeld simply had a bad day. But then, what about his statement earlier last week, when asked about troop levels? "The big debate about the number of troops is one of those things that's really out of my control." Really? Well, "the number of troops we had for the invasion was the number of troops that General Franks and General Abizaid wanted."

Leave aside the fact that the issue is not "the number of troops we had for the invasion" but rather the number of troops we have had for postwar stabilization. Leave aside the fact that Gen. Tommy Franks had projected that he would need a quarter-million troops on the ground for that task -- and that his civilian superiors had mistakenly promised him that tens of thousands of international troops would be available. Leave aside the fact that Rumsfeld has only grudgingly and belatedly been willing to adjust even a little bit to realities on the ground since April 2003. And leave aside the fact that if our generals have been under pressure not to request more troops in Iraq for fear of stretching the military too thin, this is a consequence of Rumsfeld's refusal to increase the size of the military after Sept. 11.

In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort. Rumsfeld acknowledged this last week, after a fashion: "I mean, everyone likes to assign responsibility to the top person and I guess that's fine." Except he fails to take responsibility.

All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments. Some have stubbornly persisted in their misjudgments. But have any so breezily dodged responsibility and so glibly passed the buck?

In Sunday's New York Times, John F. Burns quoted from the weekly letter to the families of his troops by Lt. Col. Mark A. Smith, an Indiana state trooper who now commands the 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, stationed just south of Baghdad:

"Ask yourself, how in a land of extremes, during times of insanity, constantly barraged by violence, and living in conditions comparable to the stone ages, your marines can maintain their positive attitude, their high spirit, and their abundance of compassion?" Col. Smith's answer: "They defend a nation unique in all of history: One of principle, not personality; one of the rule of law, not landed gentry; one where rights matter, not privilege or religion or color or creed. . . . They are United States Marines, representing all that is best in soldierly virtues."

These soldiers deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have.

The writer is editor of the Weekly Standard.

I miss the days when a certain someone had Rummy as his avatar.

Good article.

Kristol, of course, has to look for a scapegoat since the war that he has supported since it's conception has turned out to be a big ol' mess.

Rumsfeld fits the bill nicely.

Never mind the fact that the policy was a bad idea from the start.

It is kind of funny to see these neo-cons scrambling for someone to blame. Richard Pearle was on O'Reilly a while back and said that if we would just have left Iraq after Saddam was deposed, everything would be OK.

Yeah, but we had to round up all those WMDs, and that's hard work, ya know? I mean, WMDs aren't just right out there in the open, and well, eh, it's hard work trying to find them all, and keep them out of the hands of the evildoers. But we're making progress, ya know? People are working hard to spread freedom. Workin' on Saturdays. Sometimes even on Sundays. But we're workin' hard.

http://www.moveon.org/censure/caughtonvideo/

Sums it up. The man cannot be trusted, he lies, spins, and tries to fool the American people with doublespeak and circular logic. He's not worthy of the position he holds.

Well, some flipflops are okay.

Good article CW.

Well said.

I don't particularly mind him, he's no worse than any of the others. I mean, they're all puppets for the administration, they say what's expected of them. And I'm not saying that the Bush administration is at fault, because Rumsfeld would surely be whistling a new tune the second a Kerry administration took over (assuming he would still be Secretary of Defense).

The reason I actually like Rummy more than just about anyone else in this administration is because I think he's one of the few who is NOT a puppet. He and Cheney are the puppetmasters, as far as I can tell.

--PunkDavid

I am getting to the point where I hardly post anymore because PD espouses my views for me. I do not personally find the man to be inept, or repulsive, though I think stubborn would be a fitting description of his character. I would not go so far to question his intelligence but I think he presents himself as arrogant more often than not. For people who overtly support this conflict this is a wonderful thing, for the rest of the world it comes across as somewhat devious (thank god he is not the Secretary of State). I have no problem with the picture of him meeting with Hussien, I do not see it as relevant considering its age. I am going to admit that although I have a better grasp on defense policy and the capabilities of our intelligence communities / military I will not be able to make an accurate assessment of his decisions for several years, and neither will anyone else who could substantiate a valid opinion on his efforts.

There was a commentator on NPR on Friday afternoon who had formerly worked for Rumsfeld in the private sector, and he said that he greatly admired the man as a business leader. He said that Rummy is one of the most gifted administrators he has ever met, and that the man can run an organization to incredible control and efficiency. But he also said that Rummy is not a leader of MEN. He has terrible interpersonal skills, and that becomes evident when he is confronted with the human costs of an operation, like he was by that soldier's question last week.

It reminds me of that quote about Cheney that was posted in an article a few months ago where an old friend had said that he had never met nayone "with less interest in human beings" than Dick Cheney. I think these two men underscore the main reason why I don't think that the model of running a government like a corporation is a valid idea.

No more MBA presidents, bring back the lawyers.

--PunkDavid

Ugh, no. Lawyers are staffers. CEO's are nice for your portfolio. What we need are more MPA's in the exec.