How much money, lives, international goodwill and countless other intangibles has this man’s hubris cost us? It boggles the mind that the mastermind behind such a colossal strategic failure as Iraq could still be calling a lot of the shots. Ulitmately I realize Bush is to blame, buck stops here and all that, but honestly Rumsfeld ignored experts in the Intelligence community and military experts in order to test his idiotic theories. People are dying because he treated the military as his chemistry set.
Piss-poor planning for post invastion occupation, overruling expert opinion on troop levels and equipment needs, best casing the greeted as liberators scenario. In my mind he is the #1 culprit in this disaster and should have been forced out in disgrace as soon as the fall of 2003. I disagree with the invasion overall, but it was absolutely criminal the way it was planned and conducted (except for the race for Baghdad) and now it is uniumaginably expensive due to his arrogance, not just in money but in lives, reputation etc.
Was Bush really that far out of the loop that Rumsfeld can be singled out as the mastermind? I mean, I agree with vivalostwages, and Bush is very well known for sticking closely to failures (sometimes even adorning them with medals), but I never got the impression that Rumsfeld was running free and loose with the planning for the war.
If you’re pissed that he hasn’t been fired, imagine how you’ll feel when Bush gives him a medal, like he does with all the big fuckups.
Rumsfeld is the Secretary of Defense, Hentor, so planning the war and running the Pentagon is his job. He’s lost the confidence of generals, probably by ignoring them, and this “lighter, faster force” thing was his idea. The end result of that was that the force in Iraq is way too small to secure the country, and we can see where that’s lead us. Shit- I don’t think firing him would accomplish anything, but it would actually be sort of nice if Bush admitted things were bad enough that he needed to create a scapegoat.
Who would replace him? No way is Bush going to fire him after the election-- even if the Dems don’t win control of the Senate, they’ll have enough votes to block most of the guys he’d want to get confirmed and turn the hearings into an Iraq-fest. No, we’re stuck with Rummy for the duration.
I am doubting nobody’s knowledge on the subject and am showing my own ignorance. What medals have been giving to the ‘fuckups’, and who are these ‘fuckups’ talked about by Hentor the Barbarian and Marley23?
Where was I when this happened? I agree that Tenet and Bremer are fuckups, but refuse to say that Franks is. I think Franks did a great job, with what he had to work with and the leadership he had to follow and obey. However, the article makes it look more like he received the medal for his endorsement of Bush instead of his leadership over the military.
The main ciritcisms of Franks that I have heard is 1) not pushing back enough on Rummy and friends for troop strength and suppoer; and 2) thinking his job was done once they took Baghdad.
First of all , Rumsfeld is NOT an idiot. he has been CEO a a large corporation, and is quite an intelligent man. While questioning his judgement, be aware that the President and the JCS have to approve the war plans, so Rumsfeld is certainly not the only party to this disaster. As for post-war plans: i don’t think ANYBODY had any solid plan (once Chalabi was sacked). Beyond a vague hope that the situation will calm down, i don’t see any evidence of a coherent plan. :mad:
True. If I had to choose between Rummy and Bush in planning a war, I’d pick Rummy every time. His problem is not lack of experience, it is being so committed to the minimal resource policy that he “stays the course” even after it has clearly failed. Bush’s blunder was in not firing him years ago, since you don’t have to be able to design a war plan to know that someone else’s is screwed up. But that would be admitting a mistake, and firing a buddy, and who knows where that would lead? Anyhow, if he did that, Cheney might not read Hungry Hungry Caterpillar to him before he goes to bed.
The State Department had a study and experts who were pretty accurate as to what could be expected. This didn’t fit the dogma, so it got dumped, and they didn’t even have a fallback plan. So it’s worse than them not having a plan - they had a good one, and tossed it. :mad: :mad:
There were several experts who testified before congress that the force needed to occupy Iraq would be in the 350-400 thousand range. These were not off the cuff estimates but ther result of research into similar situations, war-gaming, etc. Wolfowicz somewhat famously said, “It’s hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army. Hard to imagine.” Of course, they were using their “we will be greeted as liberators” rationale to justify all their arguments.
A large problem with his “faster, lighter” army ideas are that they are lifted whole cloth from business. K-Mart may out compete Target by keeping a minimum inventory and relying on overnight shipping to keep the shelves stocked. However, Target isn’t shooting K-Mart’s drivers, bombing the roads the K-Mart truck needs to drive over, and generally physically preventing K-Mart from carrying out its plan.
Rumsfeld seems to have failed to take into account that the Fed Ex style of troop and equipment movements may not work so well if the one truck containing all the stuff you need tomorrow is blown up.
Those stodgy old-school generals seem to understand it, but they have been shunted aside with the criticism that they don’t understand progress and are fighting the last war.
Between this CEO President and this CEO Secretary of Defense, perhaps we can start recognizing that being a CEO isn’t a brain-stretching position that some folks claim it is…
Sounds to me like something that should have been thought out before the invasion, then. And I’m not even a CEO!
