In response to Ronald Draper’s GQ article, Donald Rumsfeld’s spokesman Keith Urbahn served up the following:
Office of Donald Rumsfeld
GQ’s “Facts†on Rumsfeld
The slides in the “World Intelligence Update†were prepared on a daily basis by military personnel serving on the Joint Staff, which reported to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, not the Secretary of Defense. The report was briefed regularly to senior military officials in the Pentagon – only occasionally to the Secretary of Defense and not to the President of the United States.
Rumsfeld was fully aware that words and actions could be harmful and counterproductive to the war effort. It’s safe to say that some of these cover slides could be considered in that category. The suggestion that Rumsfeld would have composed, approved of, or personally shown the slides to President Bush is flat wrong. It did not happen.
Given that Draper used anonymous sources for this charge as well as for the rest of the innuendo in his piece, one would think he might have at least done a cursory review of the facts. He might then have avoided being taken by people with an axe grind. When Draper goes back and checks reality against his reporting, he might also check whether GQ is in need of a new gossip columnist.
John Bolton’s mustache, “Regis,” could not be reached for comment — mostly because he and Rumsfeld’s wire-rimmed specs, “Lanny,” were too busy slugging single malt and banging Swedish flight attendants by the gross.
(h/t Corner)
Too late. Plastic Turkey #5904.
GQ is the magazine what does the article about how you are opposed to shave with the grain and then you get another issue and it says you are opposed to shave against the grain and it’s very confusing. It’s also gay gay gay like to where if you read it you will want to do six gay things all at once.
I still think Don fucked up (partially) the Iraq occupation, but I think he is a good man, a patriot, and I hope his wire rim glasses are having a good time with Bolton’s stach chasing those Swedish stewardesses.
I think Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns” go by “Huxley”.
Yeah, but who you gonna believe? A guy who was helping pull wounded out of the Pentagon on 9/11 making a public statement, or a journalism school graduate citing anonymous accusers?
I think we can count this among the things what went without saying not six months ago:
We will never allow terrorists to be released in United States…*
Joe – How easy is it to make such an assertion? One does not have the benefit of a retrospectoscope in real time.
Too late. Plastic Turkey #5904.
Sure, but if it wasn’t this it would have been something else. Positions need supporting evidence to remain valid. Consider it a public works program for those who have decided to service the lie.
“Rumsfeld was fully aware that words and actions could be harmful and counterproductive to the war effort. It’s safe to say that some of these cover slides could be considered in that category.”
What a complete load of crap. The slides say on them that they’re classified. Is this really where we’re at — that no one can ever say anything to the President that might conceivably offend someone else who isn’t there to here it, even in a f**king classified briefing?
I want to punch the author of the GQ story in the face. But for conceding the asinine point, I want to kick Rumsfeld’s spokesweasel in the balls.
Some on the right are critical of Rumsfeld too. Pete Wehner is not a j school flunkie.
Conservatives learn from their mistakes. Failures happen and should be responded too. I am not critical of Rumsfeld because he made mistakes, I am critical of Rumsfeld for not reacting to them sooner. But I do not consider a bad man. He is a patriot.
I voted for Bush twice. Doesn’t mean I have to like the expansion of prescription drug benefits, althought that is small potatoes compared to what Team Obama are now up to.
I wish Sade would make a new cd.
Here is the Wehner quote: “I’m grateful that the situation in Iraq is such that we now have people eagerly wanting to be associated with the policies of the last two years. There are a handful of individuals–including Jack Keane, Raymond Odierno, David Petraeus, Ryan Crocker, Fred Kagan, Stephen Hadley, and the President– who deserve credit for the turnabout. Donald Henry Rumsfeld is not one of them.”
Joe, I assume I was too subtle at 4 and Joe was too subtle at 7.
Disagreement is fine but as you’re arguing for the theoretical reality where we don’t have any way of knowing what would have happened the burden on you is to make a remarkably strong case.
oh. I guess I was too subtle at 11.
Joe=JD, above. Feels funny typing that.
I think so, happyfeet. I missed it, my brain is slowing down due to a late afternoon coffee deficiency.
Iraq went to shit. Rummy was in charge. Gates and Petraeus took over and it improved. Right away. So should we have just left Rummy in charge and let things sort themselves out? So all the credit to Gates and Petraeus is wrong, and in your alternate reality Rummy is the one who should get the credit for the turn around?
Running alongside this crap story about Rumsfeld has been another crap story ginned up by Lawrence Wilkerson, SecState Powell’s former chief of staff, to the effect that Dick Cheney had pushed for enhanced interrogation techniques to be used on captives in the Iraq war in order to forcibly deliver (false) evidence that alQaeda and Saddam had linkages. Tom Joscelyn at Weekly Standard has been busy the last week or so shooting down Wilkerson’s horseshit. JoM has gotten in on the action now and then as well.
haha…I caught it happyfeet. Joe has his dead horses he likes to beat, that’s for sure. But to his point, sometimes you have to reaffirm your bonafides in here. And not with the host.
OT-but our turtle is getting much bigger than anticipated. For my 10 year old daughter, this is a very pleasant surprise. Sorry, carry on.
To paraphrase the great moral philosopher Master Shake: “GQ?!?!? I hope you were at the dentist’s office!”
No shit, techie. GQ? I mean really, GQ? I read Hustler for it’s moralizing, too.
But, as conservatives learn from their mistakes, check out Hume and Popper on the problems with inductive reasoning, the only form of reasoning available to you in your what-if hypothetical.
These arguments can be made, but they can’t be said to be true. So, how about a few more qualifiers and greater modesty regarding your confidence in your conjectures.
You can appeal to Boot, Wehmer, and others, but they face the same fundamental problems.
Rumsfeld is one of those guys who tried to fight the system and change the status quo and they pushed back against him. Hard. Now he’s as demonized as President Bush, to the point that even people who should be on his side have bought into the hate.
Look at that again and tell me what you can logically deduce from that. Because if I add the “Therefore… all crows are black” I’d hope you could see it for yourself.
Said nothing of the sort. And, I appreciate your parroting the alternate reality line back to me, but I used it to make a point.
Heuristics, anyone? Rummy’s rich recipe.
Rumsfeld was the Secretary of Defence. Sure his views on strategy carried a lot of weight but he was not alone. He had a whole cast of thousands advising him on what to do in Iraq. Yes the buck stopped with him, but Monday morning quarterbacks, even people who were there and disagreed with his strategy at the time, need to give an awful lot of detail to prove that strategy wrong. Especially considering how successful, and cheap in terms of US casualties, the whole enterprise has so far been.
Then there’s that whole ‘the insurgency had to last long enough and be brutal enough for the awakening to happen and the surge to work’ theory. That’s one I find quite plausible.
We need to leave it to historians to judge the merits of Rummy’s strategy. We won’t, of course, but we should.
Donald Rumsfeld’s spokesman Keith Urbahn
I loved his cover of Steve Forbert’s “Romeo’s Tune”.
A lot of you Rummy fans are ready to service him.
Unfortunately this is not what Regis and Lanny exactly had in mind after the single malts.
Joe, weren’t you just saying in a different thread that people should be able to debate this without acting like children?
As a conservative, I hope you will learn from your mistake at #28.
Oh come on bh, that video clip is funny.
Anyone care to argue that Sherman’s march to the sea was unnecessary? Or that nuking Nagasaki was gratuitous?
Let us suppose, for a moment, that Iraqis are people rather than brownish robots who tawk funny. Let us further make the far-fetched assumption that neither Bush nor Rumsfeld is an imperialist, and that the goal is not an American possession or even protectorate, but an Iraq that is a nation in the Westphalian sense of the word.
Starting from that point, we can easily deduce that the involvement of Iraqis is vitally necessary to success. (There are far too many Rumsfeld- (and Bush-) bashers who are implicitly assuming that what the Iraqis do is/was of little or no importance — that it was purely a matter of employing the occupation forces in the proper way.)
Now: suppose that the people running things, Bush, Rumsfeld, et. al., have an overoptimistic view of the strength of Iraqi society. They think that the institutions and societal adjustments necessary for self-determination are there, simply suppressed by Saddam Hussein and his merry men. If we add in that assumption, the initial “light footprint” strategy makes all kinds of sense — it assumes that the Iraqis are ready to take over, and all the Americans have to do is stay out of the way and perhaps hold their coats. But if the assumption is/was wrong, if Iraqi society has been damaged more by forty years of dictatorship than originally imagined, “light footprint” is going to result in things going to Hell in a handbasket — as it did.
But Iraqi involvement is still necessary. Smothering the place with more troops could probably have stifled the violence, but it would have done nothing to strengthen Iraq’s social contract — quite the contrary: it would have made them totally dependent. If you (as planner) don’t want total dependence, you are then somewhat stuck.
Now, as it happened, Iraqis gradualy did rebuild their civil society, at least as far as the Sunni Awakenings and the rejection of Shi’ia militias by large swathes of the citizens. This offered an opportunity to implement what had been intended all along — “help” does not mean “do it all for them.”
The result is/was “The Surge”, which is badly misrepresented by almost everybody in the commentariat, bloggers and MSM alike. The increase in American power was really quite minimal. The change was one of procedure.
But meanwhile the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth on the domestic scene had reached such a fever pitch that implementing the surge would have been impossible without a fairly major political hammer in the spokes. The simplest way to do that was to throw Rumsfeld to the wolves. He could have managed the surge just as well as Gates did, but he wouldn’t have been allowed to because of the political situation.
So: Rumsfeld out, Gates in, and no significant change in either strategy or tactics, just a political gesture to satisfy domestic requirements, neither more nor less. Purely symbolic.
Regards,
Ric
Here is another one for you.
That one grossed me out.
Anyone care to argue that Sherman’s march to the sea was unnecessary? Or that nuking Nagasaki was gratuitous?
No.
What is your point ThomasD?
Well done, Mr Locke.
Let us suppose, for a moment, that Iraqis are people rather than brownish robots who tawk funny.
I do not buy the premise that we had to go through what we went through during the occupation in terms of the violence. I think it is likely that a different strategy from the start could have avoided much of it, such as a Petraeus strategy from the start. Yes some violence would have likely occurred, but not as much as what happened. And Ric Locke, while I agree that the rebuilding of Iraqi society was necessary, Rumsfeld was the one dragging his feet on nation building.
That’s rich, considering Joe’s incapable of arguing like an adult.
Rob, I just disagree with you.
Drink up Rob, drink up.
Apparently Joe can’t read. Which is a shame. He does seem invested in the idea of different leadership equaling puppies and rainbows. I guess everyone needs a dream.
C’mon Joe, bark like a moonbat for me.
I just think Gates and Petraeus did a better job than Rumsfeld and Brenner. I can read, I can also see what happened. Nevertheless, no dissent is allowed.
guinsPen, stop blowing kisses at Rummy. It is creeping him out.
Dissent all you want. Just make sure you’re not overlooking words that address your concerns. Which you are.
It sucks to be a modern McNamarra. At least Rumsfeld will not cry like McNamarra was prone to do.
At least you have found your dream Joe. So that’s something.
I think it is likely that a different strategy from the start could have avoided much of it, such as a Petraeus strategy from the start.
A counter insurgency strategy before there was an insurgency? Interesting. Where can I get a pair of those hindsight glasses?
Joe, did school let out early today?
Nevertheless, no dissent is allowed.
It’s not about dissent, Joe. It’s about you repeating the same tired rhetoric. Or are you forgetting that the same people that were calling for Rumsfield’s head in 2006 went on to declare the surge a failure shortly thereafter?
If you have a differing opinion, fine. Make your case, but as BH stated earlier, it has to be a strong one. Phrases like “I think” and “I believe” are not going to cut it.
Good stuff at #32, Ric.
Come on BigD, the insurgency started about two months into the occupation. And it started to escallate over time with al Qaeda trying to start a civil war with the Shiites. Shit happens, I am not criticizing Rumsfeld for not being perfect, but a counter insurgency plan six months in, a year in, would not have made a huge difference? Rumsfeld wanted to toppel Saddam and get out. He was never a fan of nation building (it is messy) and unfortunately that is what we had to do to some extent (especially after the Baathists got the boot). It is Bush, over protests by Cheney, who changed course in Iraq.
It’s not about dissent, Joe. It’s about you repeating the same tired rhetoric. Or are you forgetting that the same people that were calling for Rumsfield’s head in 2006 went on to declare the surge a failure shortly thereafter?
Those motherfuckers I have not forgotten. They are lying sacks of shit and mostly disloyal to this country.
Let me say it again, Don Rumsfeld is a patriot. He did some good things as Sec of Defense. He is an honorable man. But he made some critical mistakes in Iraq and the President was correct in relieving and replacing him. I wish President Bush had done so sooner. And it is not disloyal or misguided to say so.
You are operating under the assumption that different leadership in the early stages of Iraq would have resulted in lower levels of violence, Joe. However, it is equally as likely that different leadership could have led to increased levels of violence or even exactly the same amount. Do you agree?
That is bullshit, Joe. Petraeus himself has said on multiple occasions that the surge worked because it coincided with the realignment of many tribes with the US instead of AQ. Timing was everything, whether you “buy” it or not.
I am not saying it would have been perfect, but there was a conflict with Rumsfeld wanting out, Bremmer alienating everyone in Iraq, and the lack of a counter insurgency strategy initially. It is not bullshit, it is more probable than not it would have been better.
Petraeus implemented something like it in Mosul prior to being tapped for the counter insurgency plan for the entire country.
I will say that I remember the day early on, when Rumsfeld (I think) characterized the nascent insurgency as the last gasp of some die-hards. When I heard that, my first thought was oh, shit.
Arabs have never defeated modern Western armies unless they use insurgency. And they know it. Hizbullah is one of the Arab world’s great role models. That anyone in the Pentagon or outside of it ever imagined that Saddam wasn’t planning for insurgency from the very beginning, even if only as a Plan B, is a sad statement on institutional blindness.
C’mon Joe, bark like a DoS apparatchik for me.
Come on BigD, the insurgency started about two months into the occupation. And it started to escallate over time with al Qaeda trying to start a civil war with the Shiites. Shit happens, I am not criticizing Rumsfeld for not being perfect, but a counter insurgency plan six months in, a year in, would not have made a huge difference?
I don’t know, Joe. Neither do you. That’s the point and the major source of my irritation with your approach. You cannot just say that things would have been different if we had only done X at such and such time. It appears to me that you are viewing events through the prism of hindsight. Things were not so clear in 2004-2006.
There is also the unproven assumption that had Gates and Petraeus taken charge earlier, we could be sure that they would have acted as they did later. They might have. They might have acted like Rumsfeld and Bremer. They might have taken a third course altogether.
Precisely bh. That’s the problem with analysis based on hindsight. You cannot change one variable and expect everything else to remain unchanged.
Iraq had to get to the point it was ready to join the fight against the bad guys, to where they realized the invasion was to help them, to get over the “us vs them” that led too many to join the terrorists before any counter insurgency would work. The invasion was so fast there was no war weariness, and the Iraqis had been led to believe for over a decade that the US was evil and after their oil. We had to prove that wrong.
Anything we did sooner than that wouldn’t have helped, no matter what it was short of Roman style scorched earth retaliations, which would prove that we were as bad as they thought.
It’s funny though, you should hear me savage the Packer’s GM. It’s the oddest thing, he always ends up doing the wrong thing whereas I would always do the right thing.
If only the Hoffbergers never had to sell…..
Preaching to the choir, bh, but my GM is Jerry Jones, a worthy target of scorn if ever there was one.
“That’s a fucking lie and you’re a fucking liar. Fuck you.”
And that’s how it must be done, my friends. Bravo. I look forward to seeing Rumsfeld picking his teeth with Draper’s bones.
Dumb shit moneybagged knownothing owner-meddling worlds Big-D, now with more Barack Obama, soon to be GM’s GM.
Oh, cut it out, Ric. We all know that wars rise and fall on the pattern in which the current SecDef casts the magic beans. We should hurry up and roll over Iran while we’ve got such a brilliant SecDef at the helm as we have now. How could we lose?
You might call that a Patriquin strategy. It wasn’t a secret. It wasn’t even necessarily brilliant, but rather common sense borne of boots-on-the-ground experience. It also wasn’t something that could have been implemented on Day One. Because Iraqis are people too and they had a few ideas of their own that needed to fail before that plan could work.
Now, now. Just because they don’t scalp their nethers doesn’t make them gross. Just a bit furry. That’s why tooth picks were invented..
I spent a good part of the last two years raising hell at Mike Tomlin’s ultra-conservative offensive play calling, was sure he was fucking up.
My friends reminded me of it all during the Super Bowl.
Now that is funny.
Reality based.
I don’t know, Joe. Neither do you. That’s the point and the major source of my irritation with your approach. You cannot just say that things would have been different if we had only done X at such and such time. It appears to me that you are viewing events through the prism of hindsight. Things were not so clear in 2004-2006.
This is definitely all hindsight. I do not disagree that what would or would not have worked back then is not certain. But I do know that Petraeus’ strategy was working in Mosul (and was rejected by many of his superiors), then he was brought back home to a desk where he wrote the counter insurgency manual, then he was brought back to Iraq (due to Bush, not Rumsfeld) and that plan worked for the entire country.
I am absolutely convinced Bush, Gates, and Petraeus saved Iraq and the war effort from failing.
guinsPen, bark for yourself!
I sayyy…
woof
Joe, We get it. Please, in the name of God, stop. We will just assume that all bad in Iraq was Rumsfelds fault, all good was those who came after. There, happy now?
Seriously, let it go. You are approaching nishi levels of obsession.
woof-woof
in joe’s defense i think he’s just really adament about his position. I agree with John, who I generally will defer to when it comes to military stategery (pun) that hindsight is 20/20 and those in charge make the best decision they can and see what happens. I mean, I’m a damn civie (though I have a bunch of friends in the military) and I know war is anything but an exact science and Dick Marchinko said everything that can go wrong, will go wrong and its a question of adaption.
My only thought is I think we need people like Joe, who can generally have a conversation with us and challenge us without the meya type moonbat stuff. Yes, I think he should drop the Rumsfeld thing- I mean, we get it- and I know I disagree with him on torture- but one of the things important to the conservative base as a whole is to find common ground with those still under the tent.
Ok, I suck but I tend to be a referee =x Also, I have a mancrush on Ric Locke’s brain and logic and the way he puts things. Ric if you’re ever in Tampa, I’ll so buy all your beer while i pick your brain – your posts always educate.
When I worked at the NY Sun I had an editor who consistently said, regarding anonymous sourcing, “If this story was about you, and someone ran this story with this anonymous quote, would you think it was fair and just?” If you are an honest man or woman, the idea of having an anonymous critic sound off about you with the full protection of the
first amendment and NY press shield laws is disgusting.
So if you like the tip you have, you push. Pushing to get documents or people on the record, but especially the documents though, is pretty much what separates the good reporters from the hacks. There are not many left.
Which is to say, this all reads like A Seymour Hersh piece–cheap, fast and above all, easy. No nuance, depth or even dimension. Rumsfeld=Sauron. OOOOOOkay.
Sorry that some here dont see it, or won’t have it, but Rumsfeld deserves a really thorough going over, and in all probability, a massive amount of criticism.
This wasnt that piece though and GQ proved that it isnt that place.
Fair enough, I am done with this issue. Here is my State Department send off. H/T to whoever turned me on to this yesterday.
You are all welcome at my hidden moutain retreat when Obama turns us all into John Galts. I will give out beers while they last.
approaching nishi levels of obsession
And a violation of the Neutral ‘Zono.
My bold. Perhaps you could make your case before calling people blind or obstinate?
I will be accused of highjacking, but here is Penn and Glenn having a love in over libertarianism.
I am enjoying my latest creation, which is a hoppy homebrew spiced with lemon grass. It worked really well, the lemon grass gives it a bite. Alcohol is around 6%. Hoppy, but less than an IPA. Very dry and crisp.
I don’t think anyone here would have a problem with that at all. We are just tired of the continuous massive amount of criticism while completely ignoring the thorough going over. It’s the “in all probability” part I am tired of.
This is not intended to slam Rumsfeld, but make a broader point.
Yep. Exactly.
Sure BH.
Based on several threads over the past week, perhaps more like several days, there are a number of commentors here who have taken a lot of umbrage at criticism directed at Rumsfeld. Im not gonna waste my time listing who and citing posts. You seem bright as all get out and know what I mean.
Some have been reasoned in their response, Ric Locke comes to mind, some have not. The points made against Rumsfeld were not Kos-like so warranted a more respectful treatment, as I see it. I really did not think a multi-graf establishment of this was in order. But there, that’s why I wrote it.
Put another way: Criticism of Rumsfeld seems to hit a nerve around here. I can understand why. After five years of Kos, Frank Rich-NYT Op-Ed, My DD and too many other moonbat sites and people to mention, reasoned criticism (and I consider Joe’s criticism to be considered and measured, avoiding the hyperbole and absurd rhetoric of so many Bush DoD detractors), any criticism likely seems to be of a piece with (pick a name, doesnt matter much.)
And that’s a crying shame. What makes PW better than most politics-culture sites is its willingness to stand apart from the political fold it could so easily find shade in.
ok. cue the snark.
That video of the Iraqi recruits doing jumping jacks brings back memories, except I was doing firearms training.
Imagine the same guys with loaded guns.
I have taken unreasoning unbrage at criticism directed at Mr. Rumsfeld because of not to would be disrepectful to all the men and women and little childrens that are living free of tyranny and oppression because of his efforts. It was the last great thing our once-great nation did, freeing those people, and if we ever make our way back to being who we once were, we could do worse than to have the noble and dedicated Mr. Rumsfeld as an exemplar to guide us.
well, someone should get on it.
Midge Dector came out with a book a few years back that was interesting.
Rumsfeld is damned impressive, a former carrier pilot, football player, was a passable chief of staff at a really young age for a POTUS who needed a lot of sheparding. As a CEO, he was no visionary, but he did a solid job at General Instrument and GD Searle and left a lot of cash in that world to join USG again. He also managed to keep his company’s away from scandals and the like, which was a Herculean task in the 90s, it seems.
he also tried to remake the military–always an interesting task–while then forced into the ultimate counter-insurgency, variable intensity conflict. He then was, I have been told, a major proponent of hitting Iraq. I dont know if he wasnt a big fan of the surge, but I know he had to go for Petraeus, Ordinero and the rest to do what needed to be done.
when someone has to go in order for the groundwork for victory to be achieved, well, thats not a check in the plus column.
MVA alert bh.
Before responding to mcgruder, I’m giving you an enormous HEH!!!, Geoff.
I hope I am right, because the issue is important…
Just perhaps, perhaps the right thing might be done. Not out of principal, but due to Harry Reid being shrewd enough to know it will hurt the dems if they do forward with this.
You cannot change one variable and expect everything else to remain unchanged.â€
Butterfly effect?
mcg,
Ric addressed this point above, in a way that seems pretty well reasoned to me. Maybe Rumsfeld had to go for internal political reasons? Perhaps the check in the plus column is that he fell on his sword.
Towards the back and forth baiting, hey, it’s a blog, it’s going to happen. However, while Joe — a fellow homebrewer and thereby an upright citizen — doesn’t foam at the mouth, I’m not sure he realizes the demands his position logically requires. There is some frustration with that. And he could address that to mitigate accusations of sophomoric argumentation or a certain glibness.
As this “gut instinct” that Rumsfeld did a poor job continues, wouldn’t it be for the best that someone would put forth the strong form of the argument so it could be debated?
No snark, reporter.
Patronize some more, then maybe.
BH, out of anyone here, i am in the least advantagous position to patronize. I am sadly not as well-informed as a lot of people. But, Man, I could tell you stories about patronizing in MSM. They’d make you angry, but none of them would shock you.
to the balance of your points, fair enough, I take them.
Well, mad dogs and Englishmen have their druthers.
OK, I’ll bite. What’s an MVA alert?
Big D, I’m afraid of MultiVariate Analysis. Econometrics prereq. Nearly killed me.
bh?
I’m not touching it. Once burned, twice shy.
Joe doesn’t know what a “counter-insurgency srtategy” is. He’s made that abundantly clear by his repeated mischaracterizations of what was done.
As such all assumptions and presumptions that flow from that flawed premise is wrong.
Add to that that he’s just a 2-bit instigator and thus socially poisionous, I can’t see much future in engaging him in debate.
bh – Don’t think for a moment that I did not notice that scurious insult upthread ;-)
Ok. I thought I was perhaps in the middle of an inside joke. Bringing up econometrics this late will induce nightmares.
Big D,
It comes from comments 15, 21, and 27 here.
and #33
Mcgruder – Speaking only for myself, I have no problem with criticism of Rumsfeld. None. And were Joe to actually lay out a case against him, that would be interesting. However, the “case” presented consists of wishing things had been done differently and relies on the assistance of a 20/20 retrospectoscope. That, and he likes to try to threadjack.
Hitch seems like he is one of those folks that would be interesting to share a drink/meal with.
bh – for that insult, may your dreams be haunted by visions of teeming hordes of demonic midget clowns on Shetland ponies.
Or, Michael Moore donkey punching Rosie O’Lard.
midget wresteling
was never a Rumsfeld thing
but he could pin ya
he could pin donkeys…
so sorry…
JD, haunted? That’d be the most entertaining dream I’ve had for years. I’d harness it that inspiration and become a neo-Flemish painter best known for his subtle use of a fanged Ronald McDonald.
Or, Michael Moore donkey punching Rosie O’Lard.
And what brand of industrial cleanser would you recommend for scrubbing that little image from my brain?
BigD – You can thank alppuccino for introducing me to such colorful word. And, urbandictionary.
bh – Avoid primary colors. Pastels will make those images more surreal.
JD and RTO Trainer. I putforward the Peter Wehner and Max Boot positions. Go debate that. If I am “socially poisonous” because I take a position and defend it, leave me out of it. Go back and take on Wehner and Boot’s positions and tell us why they are wrong.
What bothers me about all of this is the also the lack of support for General Petraeus and what he actually accomplished (thanks to President Bush’s support and recognition).
I understand (and support) defending Rumsfeld from the rabid dogs like Andrew Sullivan who would like nothing better than to see him prosecuted and hounded for the rest of his life. I do not disagree Rumsfeld was an honorable man. I do not understand how you can argue he was objectively so great as Secretary of Defense in dealing with Iraq and the occupation. Give me some concrete examples to support your positions.
More Max Boot
And I do not agree that Team Obama are necessarily handling Afghanistan correctly–frankly that remains to be seen if they win there. And Afghanistan is a different situation than Iraq. But there are issues regarding Gates and Rumsfeld worth discussing. Tell us all why the Rumsfeld approach was correct and whether or not Gates is now doing something different.
Rumsfeld is still my hero.
Ric Locke said it best. Rummy’s removal was purely symbolic.
Back to Joe’s “when the war went to shit” talking point. During the “shit” period, it was Eason Jordon’s CNN and GE’s MSNBC that played up every IED to knock Bush’s and Rummy’s “conduct of the war.”
Remeber the circus-ring nature of the reportage back then?
Shoot, you could have let off an M-80 anywhere in Baghdad in the ’04-’05 period, and immediately an AP article would pop up accusing Rumsfeld of “losing” the war. The media was that determined to get a scalp, by hook or by crook.
Rumsfeld was that scalp. Symbolism. Pure and simple. And Joe, folks like you are lapping it up!
More Max Boot.
steveaz, I do not disagree on how the press went after Rumsfeld. You made a good point. Leave the personal attacks aside. I am not lapping up anything, but I am reading what you wrote.
Joe – I long ago quit clicking on your links. And now, you are arguing dishonestly. I do not see anyone arguing that Rumsfeld was objectively a great Second Def. That is a position that most certainly only exists in your head. As I, and others have noted, the views you are pushing are only evidenced by virtue of hindsight, and ignores basically everything else.
Joe is incapable of laying out a reasoned case against Rumsfeld because he was never reasoned into his position. He was herded into it by a corrupt press which turned their prejudices into Conventional Wisdom.
Rumsfeld was not the obstacle in laying that groundwork. As we talk about Gen. Petreaus and his successes, or his being brought back to write the fucking book on counter-insurgency, let’s remember whose watch he did those things on. Now, as for the laying of the groundwork or the implementation of a new strategy, let’s remember what the true obstacle was. It starts with a C and ends with “ongress”. Harry “The war is lost” Reid. Barack “Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007” Obama. And let’s remember that these guys were trying to lose the war with Gates and Petreaus in charge and Rumsfeld on the golf course. That they might have been successful in leading us to failure with Rumsfeld still in place is not a failure of Rumsfeld’s. It’s political bullshit, and Bush was wise enough to know he needed to lose Rummy because he was polarizing, not because he was incompetent.
Then you have your view JD and why bother discussing it. You just want reinforce your view. You do not look at links because they interfere with your view. Wehner, who was also in the Bush Administration at the time, makes the point that Rumsfeld should not get the credit for the surge and its success because he was not a fundamental part of that change. Max Boot disagrees with Rumsfeld’s strategy in dealing with the Iraq occupation while he was Sec of Defense. Now I understand you disagee, but what is dishonest in what I am arguing?
Rob Crawford, try to be intelligent about this. Neither Boot or Wehner are part of the left MSM. Now maybe they are both wrong, and I am willing to consider that possibility, but ad homminem attacks against me are not arguments. I am certainly not putting forward crap from the left in criticizing Rumsfeld’s handling of the occupation.
Let’s also remember that a big part of the success in Iraq belongs to Iraq itself which needed to get its political shit together before any of this could work. They took waaaaaaay too long in doing that, though they ultimately did do so. And about when did that happen, Joe?
I do not click on your links because of your standard practice of linking to things rarely related to the topic. And, your practice of being a shit-stirrer. I have no problem with differing views. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. I just cannot stand the would’ve, could’ve, should’ve Monday morning quarterbacking about a fuckin’ war. The best laid plans are thrown out the window once you actually meet the enemy. Plus, I see a pattern emerging in your posts where the patriot Rumsfeld gets all of the blame for things that you believe went wrong, and none of the credit for things that went right.
Pablo, I do not disagree with the points you make. Rumsfeld was a polarizing personality and it made sense for Bush to get rid of him after the 2006 elections and the Iraqis needed to get their shit together.
My point is had Bush changed strategy before the 2006 elections and implemented the counter insurgency strategies sooner that the 2006 elections might have gone far differently. None of you want to accept that possibility, instead it is we needed a bloody occupation with al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and Saddam Baathist fighters and there was no avoiding or mitigating that.
Instead those elections were about a failed war policy and a Florida congressman fixated on boys (whose real sin was have an “R” next to his name). And instead we now have a Massachusetts congressman running around fucking up the economy and fixated on boys.
Now, you are just being obtuse, or dishonest. Why not implement that strategy in 2004? 2003? 2002? 1998?
Okay JD, it is all about me. Whatever, you are ignoring those links because you do disagree with them. I give Rumsfeld credit for good things he did. But the occupation went poorly under his watch, a change in leadership was made, and things went far better. Monday morning quarterbacking? My point is could that change have come sooner. You disagree, great. Then drop it and leave me out of it. I will not comment provided you stop brining me up.
Now, you are just being obtuse, or dishonest. Why not implement that strategy in 2004? 2003? 2002? 1998?
JD, why not implement it earlier than they did. We invaded, there was a insurgency, implement it sometime sooner than it was implemented. It was pretty clear there were problem with the occupation after Saddam was over thrown. Are you suggesting the Petraeus change could not have happened sooner? If so, why not?
Mcgruder – My apologies.
Joe – You describe a temporal relationship to the changes, not a causal relationship. And, you ignore all of the other factors that led to those decisions being made in the manner in which they were, at the time they were. The changes could have been made sooner? Sure. But without the Iraqi support that they had when these changes were implemented, the likelihood of success would not be nearly as high.
Again, you view this in isolation, as though Rumsfeld’s existence was the sole cause. I acknowledge the possibilities that you speak of. I just go further and recognize that you arrive at your position with the aid of a retrospectoscope, and ignore all of the other variables at play.
JD–I never ever said Rumsfeld being there was the sole cause of failure in Iraq. Not once. Do not put words in my mouth, especially completely false ones. And here is a link on how Bush came up with the surge–and while having the Iraqis on board was obviously important, the impetus was the political ramifications back home and the danger of completely losing the war.
Now you can call it Monday morning quarterbacking, but it is too bad these changes were not done sooner.
Mmmmmmm…no. It took the better part of a year before it became so bloody obvious that things were working and the Dems reluctantly came around to admitting it. Remember Hillary’s “Suspension of disbelief” of Petreaus and the NYT’s General Betray-us ad? September ’07, that was. And a year before the ’06 elections the Iraqi social and political climate (1.5 years post-invasion) had not progressed to the point that the surge strategy would have worked.
Also, do you remember the Best Possible Plan Imaginable And The Only Right Thing To Do from the late ’06 period? It wasn’t the surge. See Iraq Study Group.
The Iraq Study Group, also know as, how to definietly lose the war. Yeah, I remember that piece of crap. Thank God Bush told Baker to fuck off.
But that was the political consensus at the time of the ’06 elections….
In order for Bush to buck that consensus given the election results (as a referendum on Bush himself), which he did, there needed to be a major concession made. Symbolic though it may have been, that concession was Rummy.
And a year before the ‘06 elections the Iraqi social and political climate (1.5 years post-invasion) had not progressed to the point that the surge strategy would have worked.
I agree it would not have worked the same. But are you suggested none of it would have worked? Part of it is closer connections to Iraqis so they feel protected by the US forces. Part of the reason Shiites were turning to Sadr and other Shia militias was the lack of protection they were getting from al Qaeda and Saddam terrorist groups.
The 101st Airborne in Mosul, under Petreus, implemented local elections, gave out reconstruction money to locals, and placed an empahsis on local connection to tribal leaders. This worked in Mosul. In 2004, the 101st Airborne was out of Mosul and replaced by a Stryker unit. The policies that Petraeus implemented there were abandoned and Mosul quickly became one of worse towns in Iraq (rivaling Fallujah as a hot spot).
Petraeus was then given a desk job, and he rewrote the counter insurgency manual. When he was sent back to Iraq he reimplemented things he was doing in Mosul back in 2003 and they worked again.
It is facts like this that leads me to believe some of these strategies, had they been implemented earlier, would have worked during the occpation. Which is why I reject the premise that years of hell in Iraq were unavoidable. This is not Monday Morning quarterbacking but learning from this for the future.
Also, Bush surely did that based at least in part on advice he received from members of his team. Do you suppose that Rummy was probably one of those whose advice he sought and took to heart?
I am sure Rumsfeld disagreed with failure. But Rumsfeld was not a central player in the surge. Whether that was political (i.e., Rumsfeld was too polarizing) or whether that he was on the wrong side of that particular strategy is unclear. I will give you it may have been the former, although the Wehner post above suggests some of the later too.
in al-Anbar, where the Awakening was born, they didn’t need or want to feel protected by US Forces. They wanted us out and they wanted to kill us to make that happen. They embraced al-Qaeda, not us. It wasn’t until al-Qaeda overplayed their hand that they needed and wanted our help and came to learn that we would give it to them and would be reliable allies. That couldn’t have happened until certain things played out and those things took time to play out.
He wasn’t a central player because he was no longer in the game. That couldn’t be clearer.
I agree there were forces hostile to us from the get in Anbar, hell even Saddam recognize Fallujah as a hostile place to anyone not from Fallujah. But in 2003 we did find towns in Anbar that were receptive to Americans, who worked with us, and when we left al Qaeda came in and killed the “collaborators.” So people who were friendly or even neutral quickly realized that aligning with Americans was a bad idea.
Name me a town in Anbar in which Americans could walk the streets without being shot at in 2003. Sure, there were people who were receptive to us, but I don’t think you could ascribe that attribute to any Anbar population in general.
And Petraeus in Mosul in 2003 was balancing the competing interest of Kurds (who consider Mosul theirs and stolen along with Kirkuk by Saddam) and former Baathists and Saddam supporters. It was similar to the politics of Baghdad between Sunnis and Shiites.
Pretending that Rumsfeld was correct and merely let go for political reasons is just as simplistic (although definitely not mendacious) as those who seek to vilifiy Rumsfeld as a war criminal. I look at him as an honorable man with a distinguished career who unfortunately made some serious mistakes in his last big job.
Joe,
I appreciate your thoughtful engagement at PW.
Still, I think you are confusing the popular media (mis)perception of the Iraq war with the actual committee records on the war. The difference between the two is stark. It’s the same difference you’d see if you compared Bush/Rummy’s conduct of the war it is presented at West Point, with Pinch Sulzberger’s subjective “record” of the war. One is a technical deconstruction, the other is political pabulum.
Bush read the media’s antagonistic parry correctly and made the best chess move he could to deflect the thrust. He smartly projected that he was changing military tactics from a “clear and leave” approach to a “clear and hold’ one (ie. “the Surge”) when the change was cosmetic at best (see Ric’s comment above). Meanwhile, the ground assumption of Bush’s Iraq-plan, that in the end the Iraqis would determine the pace and form of their new civic arrangements under a temporary American umbrella, remained unchanged, and has, in many experts’ opinions, been entirely vindicated.
One reason why Bush’s repackaging of OIF worked so well is, his antagonists at home and abroad (the Dem’s, the Arab League, the Congressional Black Caucus) had talked themselves into a corner by demanding “change.” By giving it to them, Bush’s detractors were able to claim victoriously that they had forced Bush to “change tactics” when, in effect, he hadn’t. Bush’s cosmetic changes allowed them to plausibly claim tangible gains from their partisan, “anti-war” ankle-biting. Basically, he threw them a scrap of jerkey to chew on, and they swallowed it willingly.
It was brilliant, really. Bush rebranded and won his defining military campaign, his opponents got to say “I told you so, kinda” and the media machine got a scalp.
Think of Rumsfeld like a rooster’s tail feathers: they’re designed to pull-out easily for a reason. An attacking marauder comes away with a mouthful of oily feathers and dried guano, and the rooster lives to crow another day.
So, Joe, if you were to peruse the technical military reviews of OIF and then fold their conclusions into your paid-media impressions, you’ll have a much more complete picture of the real going’s ons.
(Note: don’t make CNN’s mistake. Secondhand, paraphrased quotes from unnamed “retired” generals in popular media don’t count as “technical” criticisms).
Cheers,
-Steve
Exactly right, steveaz. And that said, the Iraqis had to get their act together before they could do that. And that took time.
Remember how Iraq was in a Civil War in 2006? I know this because NBC told me it was so. Not an insurgency, mind you, but a Civil. Fucking. War.
There’s a simple solution to the problem of those with an agenda writing opinionated half-truths disguised as facts, and those that buy into them: I have a field big enough for them to be gathered.
BUT POST HOC ERGO PROMPTER HOC!!!!
Once more: Joe’s a child. He didn’t reason into his “position”, and you can neither reason him out of it nor expect him to explain it intellectually.
The links told him so!
Rumsfeld had offered his resignation multiple times before Bush let him go, the day after the election. I have no doubt that his being let go was ultimately a political decision on Bush’s part. I don’t find that simplistic, I find it self-evident.
Whatever Rumsfeld’s mistakes were, they pale in comparison to the Iraqis’ mistakes. In particular, Allawi had to go, and then al-Jaafari after him, and then Maliki had to find his stride. And hundreds of lower elected officials needed to pull their heads out and lead. Surely you agree, Joe, that the Iraqi government was a “central player” and not a very good one until 2007 or so.
Yeah, but then the field would be ruined for decades. Too much bullshit can burn your crops.
That’s not what the press told him, so he won’t agree to it.
I still maintain that the 2006 election was more a result of the congressional GOP forgetting their small government, fiscally responsible principals than the war. They lost because the base stayed home in protest of the wild spending more than the Dems capitalizing on MSM anti-war propaganda. The blame for the loss was a result of the propaganda, not the cause of it.
It pissed me off after the election to hear my surviving congress critter (Radanovich ) blame the loss on Bush and the war, when the reason I wouldn’t vote for the bastards was because of their own faults, not Bush’s.
Yeah, but then the field would be ruined for decades. Too much bullshit can burn your crops.
That’s where the yellow jackets and buzzards come into play.
That was well argued steveaz. I want to pull out this quote, to stress it not only for Joe, but for all the rest of us as well. We all recognize, in one way or another, some more dimly than others perhaps, that what we’ll get after the events we desire to understand will always be “a picture” of the doings, an image, a mapping, more or less incomplete, yet also more or less faithful to the vast array of the “real” that happened, the real, full of people acting in time and space. We here seem to be making a new real, not a new real back then, but a new real now, marginally related to the real “back then”, marginally, pending as it does on the necessarily incomplete roster of facts we marshal, the projected psychological states we attribute, the intentions we discover, the common assumptions we take for granted (often unexamined) and so on.
We ought, all of us, to check with ourselves, now and then, not about the image of the past we’re working on building today, but about the urges of the present (and future) that press us all forward.
I blame Bush and the State Dept. rather than Rummey, because of the PC “We are not Occupiers” anti-crusader mentality that created a vacuum and did nothing to fill it.
Rumsfeld, as an early adopter of Boyd’s work, played a huge part in the transformational reorganization which led to the 3 weeks to Baghdad blitz that summarily destroyed the flagship ME army.
Then ball was dropped in the switch from kinetic operations to that of nation building, something army’s are not designed for.
Rumsfeld was SECDEF not SECSTATE.
And yes, he was absolutely sacrificed for purely political reasons.
Q by Pablo: Surely you agree, Joe, that the Iraqi government was a “central player†and not a very good one until 2007 or so. A. I do agree.
Rob Crawford, I do not rely on opinions from the press. Stop being mendacious. You offer nothing. You do not debate but just insult. You offer no facts, no argument, just bullshit. You are not a serious person.
And lee you make a good point:
I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but obviously success in Iraq earlier than that election would have helped not hurt the GOP to maintain control of Congress. The MSM anti war propaganda hurt the GOP bad with independents and did contribute to the base staying home (in part).
Seriously Rob, it is time to go back and develop your new strategy for dealing with orcs on your computer.
Rob, is it just pro hoc coincidence that Petraues’ strategies and policies worked in Mosul in 2004, and when not implemented in 2004 they failed? And when those strategies and policies were again implemented in Baghadad and Anbar as part of the later surge they worked again? Respond to that intelligently.
Pablo,
“And that took time.”
Yup, precious, necessary time that American Exceptionalism’s global opponents would not, could not, allow us the luxury of.
The big lie is, had he won in 2000, Al Gore wasn’t going to ‘do’ regime change in Iraq. But, even before 911, the “Global Testers” had made it clear they wanted to do Iraq, but that they wanted to ‘do’ it their way: impregnated with Swiss, Norwegian and UN-affiliated NGO’s, depending on UN largess, and relying on Oil-For-Food and Gaza for their operable economic models.
But, instead, Bush ‘did’ Iraq. And he ‘did’ it the American way, by empowering local, pluralistic civic arrangements, developing local resources with an eye to building regional self-sufficiency, and by constructing a defensive military corps under a restrained federal government.
Bush’s “bottom-up” national design for Iraq rewarded local civic organizations for taking responsibility for local issues first. This approach was diametrically opposed to the “plausiblists” “top-down” preference (see Governor Blanco”s (D-LA) response to storm damage in her state).
One approach is modern, Republican and buttressed by subsidiarity. The other is postmodern, socialistic and monolithic.
So it’s not hard to imagine that everyday that the Iraqi Republic “works” and Gaza doesn’t is just one more refutation of the progressive global patronage model. And it’s obvious why the global Left pulled out all the stops to obstruct Bush’s success in Iraq.
Multi-million dollar “anti-war” protests in London, mulit-million dollar Plame-Wilson book deals, millions spent “swift-boating” the Swift Boaters…and all they got for their efforts was a lousy cabinet resignation!
Remove the dubious clouds of media hype, and a dude’d be excused for thinking that America actually works! We can take heart, too, as we watch Obama get his wing’s clipped by the Blue Dogs, the Tea Parties, Dick Cheney and the CIA.
So how did Rumsfeld support that as SecDef? Rumsfeld wanted to topple Saddam and get out. That only works if you left the Baathists in place (and Saddam was still hiding in his spider hole for months anyway, so that would not have worked).
Oh, and Mosul is still a shithole , BTW.
Do you have a cite for that, ‘cuz I’m calling bullshit.
Okay lee:
For the next three years, Donald Rumsfeld and the senior generals pushed a “short-war” scenario, “which was to get a political solution quickly, transition to the Iraqis security quickly, and get out,” says Gen. Keane. “It didn’t work. And why didn’t it work? Because the enemy voted and they took advantage.
WSJ on why the surge worked.
Y’know, if you work hard enough and fast enough you can, in fact, make a hole in the water. Trouble is, you can never stop shoveling.
Petraeus’s work contains very little that is (or was) genuinely new. It’s an extremely important codification of things that had been assembled ad hoc over many years, notably by Special Forces, thereby turning practice into doctrine from which strategy and tactics can be derived. Mosul was a proof of concept of the doctrine.
But if you do something, then walk away, and find a short time later that it’s reverted to the previous condition, what you did didn’t work. If I build a fence, then come back the next morning to find it down and all the animals scattered, I haven’t accomplished much. If I use absolutely correct doctrine to suppress an insurgency, then come back in a week to find it as vibrant as ever, I haven’t accomplished much, either.
Mosul was a proof of concept of the doctrine Petraeus was codifying. Its failure after he left was evidence, if not proof, that the doctrine, however correct, could not be successful in a vacuum — that if the conditions on the ground, consisting primarily of the mindset of the people, were not what was needed, implementing the doctrine was digging a hole in the water. Iraqis had to change their minds. There was never any chance whatever that the United States could “win” in the sense of overwhelming the opposition. “More troops” was always a red herring. We could have drafted every male 18-25 in the United States and sent them all to the sandbox, and would not have “won” in that sense.
Maybe. But the 2006 election was not about Iraq in any meaningful sense.
How do I know that? By watching what happened afterward.
Leftoids crowed after 2006 that it was all about Iraq. Many Republicans, anxious to divert blame from themselves and their turpitude, either reinforced that or allowed it to stand. But when the newly-empowered Democrats started trying to implement that, to start in on kangaroo courts and full-Press attacks aimed at frogmarching Dick and George off in orange suits, they failed in a big way because newly elected Democratic Congresscritters started getting cards and letters and phone calls from consituents telling them that wasn’t what they’d been elected for.
Regards,
Ric
That is a quote from General Keane, you think he made that up lee? And pablo while that article does support your contention, that Iraqis had to be fed up to make the surge work, it also supports my contention that active engagement with Iraqis (not the hands off approach of Rumsfeld) was critical to success in Iraq.
K Joe, I’ll accept your qualification that Rumsfeld wanted to topple Saddam, get a political solution quickly, transition to the Iraqis security quickly, and get out.
Doesn’t sound quite the same as you first stated it.
Sdferr,
We are all propagandists now (or at least we all know one, now)!
I say this, because your deconstruction provides the best rationale for today’s propaganda market. Memes are armaments, and when they’re set off next to other facts or reputations, even established verifiable ones, they have the power to destroy or maim them.
So, people will pay a lot of money to establish these “suicide-bomber” memes, true, part true, or completely false, in this day and age. This, coupled with our disastrous campaign-finance laws, derive the sewage sluice that we call today’s media-market.
To tie this back to OIF, if the US’s opponents can get a “Bush-Lied” or a “Sixteen Words in the SOTU” or a “Cowboy Unilateralism” meme to sidle up next to a tender committee resolution (like the Congress’ “Regime Change Authorization”) and blow itself up – especially in advance of an important election, then it’ll at least impact the committee’s resolve and it’s money well spent.
I do think the effect is short-lived, though, and as such, needs to be exploited quickly before it fades. As with their serial reports of “looming” environmental catastrophes (1970’s Global Cooling?) and spurious personal slanders (Bush Lied!), the reflexive re-analysis that smart people do in their own time long after events transpire tends to debunk even the most conceted media myths.
Here again, as with real war, time is an essential ingredient in success. If only they’d afford us its luxury.
Against a determinist understanding of the successes of the “surge” as a necessary outcome, we might look to see what Fred Kagan and Gen Keane thought about their handiwork as they followed its progression over time.
What do we see? We see both men surprised, nearly shocked that the scheme worked better and faster than either of them had supposed possible before the plan was implemented.
What does that tell us? I’d venture it tells us that there was much about the surge that the planners in particular did not know would come to pass. That the unknown, unpredicted events happened to be favorable to their desires does not mitigate that they were unknown, unanticipated, unexpected. Kagan, if I remember correctly, even went so far as to say that the furious rush of “good” change stood potentially to overwhelm all the planning that had been done to prepare for just such “good” changes. The logistics could not keep up.
I don’t do deconstruction steveaz, at least not knowingly, intentionally, willfully or what-have-you, since I haven’t a clue what deconstruction is (unless we’re to speak of deconstruction in the sense of building demolition, dismantlement, etc., prior to renovations, which so happens to have been one among my various employments, where I do have a great deal of experience and knowledge.) I just recall that Herodotus isn’t called the father of lies for nothing.
JD won’t check the link because I threadjack and all, but we all should be celebrating this slap down of Barack and Holder by the Senate. It is bullshit of course (Reid is doing this out of political shrewdness not principal), Barack probably invited it to give him cover from the nutroots on the left, but it is still good news.
Sdferr,
I used the word “deconstruction” lazily, I’m afraid. By it I meant distillation and analysis, or, better yet, reduction. Sorry for the confusion.
To wit, a limmerick:
In lauding a reduction,
To reward a deduction,
I receive
A divine injunction:
Jettison “deconstruction.”
Those leftists over at NRO criticizing Rumsfeld. Goddamn JD, Rob, guinsPen, pablo, it must have been Christopher Buckley who penned this one.
To be fair this is a very interesting rebuttal in Rumsfeld’s defense writen on November 15, 2006 by Barbara Lerner. I agree with a lot of it (and without knowing for sure suspect a lot of this did happen), yet still think Rumsfeld made some serious mistakes.
Funny very few of you will even acknowledge that. I get personally attacked for taking such a position. Thank God you all were not running the DoD or advising the President because we probably would have lost Iraq.
Barbara Lerner rebuttal
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YWI0NmRjODg4Zjg1MTgwNjI1YjAzMDRlZTY1MDA2MmI=
If I am “socially poisonous†because I take a position and defend it, leave me out of it.
This bears only a passing resemblance to what I said and as such stands as an example of my point.
I
take a positionmake bald assertions anddefend itrepeat my statments, often verbatim, over and over again to make them more, you know, true, leave me out of it.BTW, FTFY.
Because it’s all about gaining a political advantage.
RTO Trainer: Barbara Lerner in defending Rumsfeld in November 2006 made this statement:
Fortunately Ms. Lerner was wrong on that point. I think all patriots are happy on how Iraq turned out following the surge, including Don Rumsfeld. Let’s just hope the current administration does not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
And relied upon by Whener in his articles.
RTO Trainer–gaining political advantage? Do you feel better with Pelosi, Reid and Obama in charge? It is about doing what is right for the country. Maintaining control of congress makes sense if you are working for what is correct. Why the GOP lost control was because it was not doing that, both domestically and in Iraq.
RTO Trainer–gaining political advantage is not a end but a means to a end. The end has to be doing what is right for the United States. The GOP lost sight of that for a while (and hopefully is getting back to it) and we are definitely not better off with the Democrats in charge.
This is the mistake:
If Joe wishes to be taken serioulsy, perhaps he can define “counter insurgency strategy.” Perhaps he can tell us in what ways the Stryker brigade (3rd SBCT/2ID) commander (then-BG Carter Ham) who followed GEN Petraeus in Mosul was following some other kind of strategy–maybe even tell us what kind of strategy it actually was. Perhaps he could even tell us why the BG Ham might have chosen not to continue some of GEN Petraeus’ policies. Maybe even be specific as to what was done and not done.
Perhaps he can articulate how things would have been better had Petraeus not been given a desk job to re-write the COIN FM, why that manual’s publication was not itself an important step and who it was that made the decision, as it must not, by Joe’s lights, been Rumsfeld, to have that done.
Perhaps he can explain how, if this was such a break with the past, that the positive effects of the surge came on so quickly after implementation.
Perhaps, if he could do any of that, he could make a case (and defend it) for his position.
Re the NRO piece:
If I’m not mistaken, the ultimately winning strategy required 100K less troops than the initial invasion force consisted of.
See above. Baghdad was pacified with a much greater number of troops. Mostly Iraqi troops.
And that is why Rumsfeld was gone. Iraq didn’t turn around because of the massive influx of troops that the NRO piece tells us was Rumsfeld’s failure to provide. It turned around because of a modest increase in troops, a change in strategy and most importantly a sea change in Iraqi attitudes and capabilities. And that last part? It took time.
As for Lerner:
What was the peak number of troops during the surge, Joe? Here’s a hint. Rumsfeld’s “mistake”? Bush, Gates and Petreaus made it again, even after having been instructed on the error of their ways by the National Review.
RTO Trainer. That first one is a rather broad question, but the fundamental change was having the U.S. troops be put in small bases in Baghdad neighborhoods working closely with Iraqis. More troops were part of it, but as you know the expansion was not massive. Part of the failure of the Stryker brigade taking over from the 101st in Mosul in 2004 is that it reduced troops by 3/4s. I guess your argument is had Petraeus been there with the 101st it still would have gone to shit? Do you have any back up on that?
My argument is a simple one. Don Rumsfeld made some serious mistakes during the occupation and the President was correct in giving him the boot (and it would have been better if he got the boot sooner). There are others on the right who think this, Max Boot, Peter Wehner, and NRO being some of them. It was not simply Rumsfeld was polarizing, although that is certainly true, it was because he was not getting us closer toward victory. We were in fact losing the war and Rumsfeld was not the catayst for changing that dynamic. It was President who did that and who engaged Petraeus, Keane, Odierno, Crocker, Kagan, Hadley and others to make it happen. That does not mean Don Rumsfeld never did anything good, obviously he did. But he almost lost the war too.
The modest increase of troops and change of strategy did not come from Rumsfeld.
And I left Gates out too.
My bad.
Of course not. He was gone. But they were well within the parameters of his catastrophic mistake, which was never corrected. And yet, here we are…..
You keep stating and referencing others saying that the mistake was not providing a massive increase of troops. Is that right?
That mistake was never rectified, and yet we’ve pretty much won. So was that the mistake, or was it his failure to be Robert Gates?
Oh, you know what else didn’t come from Rumsfeld? Or from Gates or Petreaus or Bush or Odierno or Crocker? …a sea change in Iraqi attitudes and capabilities. Except for maybe the capabilities part which was always part of Rumsfeld’s focus and remained a large part of our plan once he was gone.
…a sea change in Iraqi attitudes and capabilities.
Okay, I agree that made a huge difference.
Pablo, was the timing of that “sea change” just perfect with the surge, or was that sea change of attitudes happening gradually, starting months earlier from when the surge was actually implemented? My point being the sooner the implementation of the surge was started, the better it would have been for us all. You suggest it could not have happened any time sooner. What is your proof of that?
My position is really not that radical. I cannot believe I even have to defend it here. I did not expect you all to be so rigid. Yet you all seem so concerned in defending Don Rumsfeld.
Fair enough, I am done with this issue.
Quite.
Here is my State Department send off. H/T to whoever turned me on to this yesterday.
No sale, Joe.
Quite.
Did you read the WSJ piece about Gen Keane you yourself posted Joe? See what he has to say about the change in Iraqi attitudes, the effect that change had on the surge, etc.
It was happening before, to some degree, but not a large one. Thew Anbar Awakening was aout the extent of it. And some of what came later was spurred by the Iraqi realization that the Dems were going to pull the plug on them if they didn’t get it together. Things had to come to a pretty bad place before the Iraqis quit dicking around and started to take a more pragmatic long view.
I was prepared to walk away from this, but I keep getting challenges after that from Pablo, RTO Trainer, etc. But I put forward credible sources from the right. I do not consider the nut root left attacks on Rumsfeld. I am only saying he did not handle the Iraq occupation correct, President Bush was correct to replace him and I wish it had taken place sooner. The country would have been better off. I get you disagree guinsPen. It is a free country. Believe whatever you want. What I find disturbing is how anti-dissent you are. That is Huffington Post/Daily Kos territory.
Anti-dissent Joe? Or seriously interested in as complete an account as can be had, which may not come down to the after action report, don’t go to war with Rumsfeld next time and whoof, boy! did he ever go out on a sour note.
Sdferr–I do not disagree a change in Iraqi attitudes helped. But to suggest that Rumsfeld did everything correct on the occupation and was only jetisoned for political purposes to allow Keane, Petraeus and Gates to get all the credit for successfully turning things around is incorrect in my opinion.
I think Rumsfeld made critical mistakes, and many on the right think so too.
6 questions asked, only one addressed and one dismissed as unanswerable. Cute.
I did answer your question, RTO Trainer, but you are not asking questions in good faith. Some of those minor points you raised I do not have the answers to and frankly neither do you. This is the equivalent of putting your hands over your ears and going lalalalala. Don Rumsfeld is good and had to fall on his sword to save Bush. Rumsfeld made no mistakes during the occupation, or any mistakes he made were excusable, and the occupation could not have bene handled better, or if it could have been done better it is just hindsight to criticize that now, and it is not fair to criticise Don Rumsfeld because he is responsible for success in Iraq. You want to believe that fine.
I give you links to right wing people who disagree and you all go nuts. I am not citing some nut rooters on the left. I made the premise that I was glad Bush let Rumsfeld go and I wish he had done so sooner. You do not have to agree with me. You do not have to agree with Boots, Wehner, NRO, the Weekly Standard. This is not Al Gore on global warming. I respect that you disagree. I think Rumsfeld fucked up. You disagree. I get that. But the nuts part is you and your reaction. The rejection of any disagreement is Daily Kos stuff. That is not classical liberalism. That is not objective thinking. That is Charles Johnson absolutism.
I know Jeff disagrees. He loves Rumsfeld. That is cool, he is entitled to. I think Rumsfeld is a patriot too, I just think he was wrong on how he handled the Iraq occupation. And JD, guinsPen, and Rob Crawford, fuck you too for your collective over re-action.
What I find disturbing is how anti-dissent you are.
On the contrary, Joe.
So, there.
So, Joe, Rummy’s two-fold “mistake” was:
1. showing “very little interest in planning for post-combat stability operations in Iraq.”
AND…
2. not adopting “the basic principle of waging counterinsurgency warfare…”
Let’s start with number one: Rummy wasn’t sufficiently interested in “planning for post-combat stability.” He didn’t share a degree of interest desired by another attendee…supposedly this is grounds for character assassination in today’s political climate.
This gripe could refer to his absence at one or two “planning” meetings, or simply that he argued convincingly against someone else’s pet planning priority. Or, as his detractors see it, it could imply that Donald Rumsfeld didn’t have the capacity to see past the initial invasion and hence, is unfit to serve in the Sec of Def’s ofice. Bah! I’m inclined to think that, like most of us, Rumsfeld kept his eye on the post invasion horizon, and that the first two objections, committee attendance trivia and hurt feelings, obtain instead.
And, with regards to number two: his alleged “not adopting the basic principle of waging counterinsurgency warfare…” I’ll leave aside the fact that this formulation forces Rummy’s defenders to disprove a negative (a la “when did you stop beating your wife?”) and could be labeled disingenuous for it, and I will skip on instead to say that, between cacophonous broadcasts calling for Rumsfeld to withdraw “over the horizon,” stop the “civil war,” reduce troop levels, increase troop levels, provide “better” body-armour, stop “torturing,” etc., it is hard to for the average citizen to know what qualifies as basic outside of the key deliberative committees.
So, specifically, did Rummy want fewer troops out of concern for casting too big a shadow on the ground? Or did he want more? Did he vote with Senator Rockefeller, or did he side with V.P. Chency in deliberations, thereby earning him a fierce, flame-throwing detractor? The answer lies in the minutes, not the NYT: I’d look to the pertinent cabinet and Congressional minutes from around that time to learn more.
I’m afraid anything else just retreads antagonistic media touchstones. Boring!
A side-note: I’d use the media’s meme-shifts on the topic of Rumsfeld much like an oncologist uses radioactive labels: their permutations and the amount of amplification given to certain antagonistic ones indicate measurable shifts in opposing, usually minority-caucus, politicians’ rhetorical fronts.
The shifts themselves and their timing are telling. Just one example: the “Bush Lied” meme got floated ’round the time it became apparent the Franco-Russo-Sino bloc couldn’t use their UN seats to block Bush from initiating OIF. A track of these memes’ contexts and their intensities indicate Pelosi’s Democrat caucus was counting on America’s “allies” to nullify her Congressional Dems’ “yea” votes in favor of OIF.
It’s as though her “anti-war” caucus was counting on Chirac to bail them out of their “pro-war” votes. I’m afraid that’s what passes for patriotism these days.
I don’t ask questions I don’t know the answers to without stating that I’m seeking information. I’ll stipulate my “bad faith” however, in the sense that I believed when I asked the question that your depth of knowledge of the subject was vanishingly shallow, that you are not receptive to new information on the subject and lacked the motivation ot seek new information on your own, even with clues to that information provided to you. In a way you have justified my “faith” in you.
I have not stated that no mistakes were made. In fact I have a short list of some that I believe were and others I know were. You haven’t touched on any of them. In fact, you haven’t touched on any at all–you only reiterate that “some mistakes were made” which in no way can be taken for establishing a position or advancing an argument.
Your links to right win people are immaterial. No one disputes that there are right wing people that don’t like Rumsfeld or think he “made mistakes.” It’s a distinction with out meaning.
The only disagreement being rejected is disagreement without substance. I gave you some clues as to how you might do that and you’ve rejected it. Which I take as evidence of my belief that you are not looking for a discussion, just a fight–still stirring up shit just in a different way.
Rumsfeld’s patriotism is only an issue to you. I don’t care if you think he’s a patriot or not. You’ve charged him with mismanagement without even one example to back that up.
Mistakes in warfare are part of the package. The existence of mistakes are not, of themselves, evidence of mismanagement. You have a long way to go if you wish to prove that premise and you haven’t even begun despite all the time you’ve spent of the subject and the number of words exchanged. Either shit or get off the pot.
I can give you links to right wing people that thought John McCain was the best possible candidate. I can give you links to right wing people that thought Barack Obama would be a great president. That doesn’t make either of those things true, and it really isn’t much of an argument.
If you’re going to press the point that Rumsfeld not only made mistakes (which I’m sure he’d agree to, hindsight and experience being what they are) but almost lost the war, which you’ve been doing, it would be nice if you could elucidate what those mistakes were and defend your position against rebuttal with something other than “So and so said…”. Unless that someone was in the mix at the time and has some first hand knowledge that we don’t.
Boot criticism mirror’s NRO’s. Not enough troops to do the job. But it didn’t take a whole lot more troops to do the job and neither Gates nor Petreaus sent the kind of numbers these critics were advocating. So, those criticisms were wrong, and can be proven wrong by the results. Then there’s Wehner:
Whose fault is that? You’ll notice that I keep repeating a factor that played a huge role in turning the situation around. It’s the one that solves that problem.
The rejection of baseless disagreement, or of disagreement that refuses to acknowledge facts that deflate it is not an intellectual fault.
Give them back their kites Rumsfield !
That’s the way I feel when my fuckin’ team wins. And if I wanna jump up and down when my team wins, and if I wanna hug my fucking players when they fuckin’ do good, I’m gonna do it. I don’t give a shit what the fuckin’ news says. *
steveaz are you reading from the original article or one of the ones I cited. There are differences. Big ones.
You wish.
[RTO is]… not asking questions in good faith
QED, people.
I know Jeff disagrees. He loves Rumsfeld. That is cool, he is entitled to.
I heard they eloped.
Some say it was the chainsaws.
chainsaws.
guinsPen, stop posting clips of yourself, that is threadjacking!
Rumsfield.
Good taste in bands. Unfortunately for him, Rumsfeld was not a Marine. But I do thank him for his service in the Navy.
Oh, and its Rumsfeld guinsPen.
don rumsfeld cracks nuts
disregards wishes and buts
teddy-bear christmas
Indeed, comma.
Oh, and please give it back its Rumsfeld guinsPen, Joe.
comma comma comma karmelion
we wake up/ with the army we have {had?)
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