THIS IS A DEFENSE???

Several generals have come out to defend Rumsfeld but their rebuttals are either irrelevant, false or self-incriminating.

Let's begin with a currently serving general, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Peter Pace:

Over the next two years, 50 or 60 times, Tom Franks either came to Washington or by video teleconference, sat down with the Secretary of Defense, sat down with the Joint Chiefs and went over what he was thinking, how he was planning. And as a result of those iterative opportunities and all the questions that were asked, not once was Tom told, "No, don't do that. No, don't do this. No, you can't have this. No, you can't have that." LINK

Note first that the planning for Iraq began over two years before the invasion. This contradicts many public statements by the Administration that nothing was being planned.

Second, Tommy Franks himself claims that they didn't pay attention to his desire for a real post-war plan:

(From Woodward's book, Plan of Attack, page 413)

The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, initially headed by Jay Garner, was not made subordinate to Franks but was given equal status. Franks, with all the troops and experience, was not in charge. He did not argue or fight for it. “I have a war to fight,” he said many times. He believed he had pushed Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and General Myers on the postwar plans as much as he could, arguing that they could not just pay lip service to issues. He had said that the decisive combat operations would go very fast, that they needed to focus on the aftermath. But Rumsfeld and the others had been focused on the war.


Pace goes on to make statements that are irrelevant to the issue at hand: Rumsfeld's competence:

Nobody, nobody works harder than he does to take care of the PFCs and lance corporals and lieutenants and the captains. He does his homework. He works weekends, he works nights. People can question my judgment or his judgment, but they should never question the dedication, the patriotism and the work ethic of Secretary Rumsfeld. LINK


No one, as far as I know, has questioned those 3 qualities because they are not the issue here. Rumsfeld can be legitimately criticized for not doing enough homework in the case of the unarmored Humvees.

A retired general who was "present at the creation" of the Iraq debacle tries an odd defense of Rumsfeld: admit his shortcomings. Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong had this to say in a NY Times op-ed piece:

AS the No. 2 general at United States Central Command from the Sept. 11 attacks through the Iraq war, I was the daily "answer man" to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. I briefed him twice a day; few people had as much interaction with him as I did during those two years.

Was Donald Rumsfeld a micromanager? Yes. Did he want to be involved in all of the decisions? Yes. But Mr. Rumsfeld never told people in the field what to do. It all went through General Franks.


The first point is irrelevant: as Churchill wrote, it's good to have a roving eye when in charge of a very large operation but that does not excuse Rumsfeld from overruling any realistic post-war plan. The second point seems to depend on the fact that the reader does not know the chain of command: Rumsfeld tells Franks and Franks tells the officers in the field.


Finally, former Chairman of the JCS Gen. Myers is reported to have made this claim:

General Myers also rebutted criticism from some retired generals last week that he and other ranking generals had failed to stand up to Mr. Rumsfeld, saying, "We gave him our best military advice and I think — and that's what we're obligated to do. If we don't do that, we should be shot."

Rumsfeld ignored Franks' desire for a real post-war plan and Myers didn't press the issue. I think this is a two-fer: both Myers and Rumsfeld were incompetent.