Rumsfeld

[Rick Nebiolo]

He could become infamous. A link from RealClearPolitcs.com to a Seymour Hersch "New Yorker" article:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030407fa_fact1

~ Rick

[HDPM]

Troubling article. Assuming the article is accurate I don't understand why war supporters like to limit their available force so much. If true it should cost Rumsfeld his job. Might cost the President his if things go wrong. Not to mention what it will do to the guys fighting. I hope things don't go wrong.

[Clarkmeister]

I hope everyone reads that article.

Its a good article in that it ties together a lot of information that has been floating around for days and puts it all in one place. In other words, this isn't news, but it is the most comprehensive presentation of the situation I've seen. Unfortunately, I have seen almost everything in the article in other places as well, so its highly likely to be a pretty accurate presentation.

The sad thing is that a strength of Bush the First's administration was that he let his military people do the military planning.

But hey, everythings going according to plan. [img]/forums/images/icons/smirk.gif[/img]

Or not.

[dogsballs]

"He could become infamous."

Yep. It's getting labelled as Rumsfeld's War. More of the similar from the UK Guardian yesterday. (you need to paste the rest of the link, the comma seems to screw it up)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,926176,00.html

dogs

[IrishHand]

C'mon now Clarky - you know the pro-war folks are going to find an objectionable line in the first paragraph and not bother to read any more than that. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] You are right though - it's a great article overall. Hmmm...
Last Thursday, the Army’s senior ground commander, Lieutenant General William S. Wallace, said to reporters, “The enemy we’re fighting is different from the one we war-gamed against.”
That sounds a lot to me like things aren't going according to plan. Then again - I'm sure the higher military authorities know lots that we don't and everything's going perfectly. What's that? Lt. Gen. Wallace is a higher military authority. Ooops...

Seriously though - most of that article doesn't surprise me. As you mentioned, most of it has been spread out in the media over the past week in some form or another.

Military commanders generally prefer overwhelming odds - the application of overwhelming forces to the correct part of the front. Since we clearly didn't have that and are now struggling to come up with it, it should be obvious that the politicians are far too involved. It's one thing to assign objectives, it's another entirely to tell career soldiers how they should go about doing it.

Irish

[The_Baron]

Herein we see the problem with having a civilian have the ability to overrule the military force developers on matters of explicit military doctrine. You don't go to war unless you plan on winning it. Otherwise you're sacrificing your own forces. You don't plan on winning it unless you plan on putting everything you can on the ground and smashing the opposition completely and as rapidly as possible.
Rumsfeld is an idiot and I suspect his resemblence to MacNamara(sp?) may well be proof of a genetic basis for military incompetence. It's time for Bush-II to fire his sorry ass and try to appoint a SecDef who understands what wars do. Who knows, maybe Bill Garrison is looking for a job. He'd make an admirable choice

[Jimbo]

"Herein we see the problem with having a civilian have the ability to overrule the military force developers on matters of explicit military doctrine."

Heh! Even as much as I enjoy a good war now and then I still do not believe the Generals should make all the major decisions! [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[IrishHand]

Politicians decide when and where to go to war, but the generals should be given nearly free reign as to how the conduct that war. I agree that the politicians should place certain limitations, like "no nukes" or "try to stop the troops from raping the locals", but anything which intrudes into the traditional realm of military command (tactics, strategies, operations, etc) is just stupid.

[The_Baron]

I don't think the generals should make all the decisions by any means. But I do think the SecDef should be a strictly advisory position to the President, not a command position. We've got a constitutional structure that forces the President to be Commander in Chief regardless of abilities to command. To install an additional command layer wherein the individual has absolutely no requirement to be capable to perform that command is just a path to situations like we're seeing now.
The forces will win. That's a given. Had Rumsfeld shut his ignorant mouth and given a tiny bit of thought to the possibility that people who'd spent, in some cases, upwards of 40 years commanding military forces, developing combat doctrine and establishing strategic and tactical parameters for various types of warfar, he might have had the sense to let the generals plan the war.
I don't believe the generals are infallible. Not by any stretch. I do believe that the critical function of the Commander in Chief is to act as the check and balance against failings on the part of his generals. We're stuck with having the President with that authority. Having a nitwit who's military experience seems to be mainly limited to watching reruns of Combat and having seen the theater poster for Platoon is counterproductive.
If you want your car fixed, you have a mechanic do the work, not the business manager for Texaco. Let's let the mechanics work on the war.

[B-Man]

If the article is true, Rumsfeld should be removed as Secretary of Defense. I thought we learned our lesson in Viet Nam that you don't try to win a war with one arm tied behind your back, but I guess some people didn't learn that (assuming the article is accurate).