Face time with the president is political gold in Washington, so Donald Rumsfeld moved quickly after taking charge at the Pentagon to secure weekly private meetings with President George W. Bush. Now, nearly six years and many meetings later, the defense secretary arrived in the Oval Office prepared to raise a delicate, and personal, matter…
"We said there’s no way he would stay if either the House or the Senate went Democratic because he would be the issue," Joyce recounted months later. The criticism "would have been relentless until he was gone." Sitting with Bush, Rumsfeld broached the possibility of his departure. A "fresh pair of eyes" on Iraq might not be a bad thing, the secretary said. He made no explicit offer to resign. Still, his inference was unmistakable…
Rumsfeld is in many respects an honorable man, deeply patriotic, a good friend to many and unfailingly loyal to those he has served and to a number who have served him. He is smart, cunning and capable of great geniality, all highly desirable qualities in a leader with such power. And the challenges he faced as secretary were considerable. But in the end, Rumsfeld’s biggest failings were personal – the result of the man himself, not simply of the circumstances he confronted. While he was unwilling to profess regrets to me, it is unlikely that he doesn’t have some. Nor do I expect him simply to fade away. That has never been his style. Withdrawal is not on his list of Rumsfeld’s Rules.
Rumsfeld had innumerable failings from where I sit. He was an ideologue, a signer of the PNAC letter to President Clinton and a neocon. He went along with what his old colleague, Dick Cheney, said [an affliction sort of like cancer]. He made many other mistakes – entering a war with no Cassis Belli, sending way too few troops, listening to Paul Brenner, rigidly adhering to a failed plan, relying on wishes rather than strategy, frowning all the time, and being arrogant. Donald Rumsfeld thought he knew what to do, but he didn’t. And he never figured it out. He was a know-it-all curmudgeon rather than a wise old man.
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