RUMMY'S GENERALS

Thomas Ricks provides some evidence that Rumsfeld went out of his way to pick generals. First (p.157), he passed over a number of active duty generals to select a retired one, Peter Schoomaker, to be Army Chief of Staff. Schoomaker himself was a bit of an Army outsider because he had spent most of his time in Special Operations, not in he regular Army. Second, Rumsfeld named Ricardo Sanchez to head the ground forces in Iraq. At the time, Sanchez was the most junior commander in the theater. Ricks wrote, "The opinion of many of his peers was that he was a fine battalion commander who should have never commanded a division, let alone a corps or a nationwide occupation mission." (Ricks, p. 173) Sanchez tenure in Iraq was disastrous on many levels, including the tremendous growth of the insurgency and Abu Ghraib.

This could be just more evidence of Rumsfeld's incompetence but I also wonder if he selected generals who wouldn't object much to his terrible planning.