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The Globe and Mail November 09, 2006

Rumsfeld takes own medicine

The biggest surprise is that he waited this long, writes Barrie McKenna

By Barrie McKenna

WASHINGTON -- After serving in the White House for former presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Donald Rumsfeld published a short book of rules about government and about life.

Among his pearls of wisdom: "Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the President."

Yesterday, he took his own advice, or more aptly, was pushed to take it by George W. Bush.

After a stormy six years on the job, Mr. Rumsfeld had become a political liability -- a lightning rod of discontent in a country that now sees the Iraq war as a colossal mistake.

It may well be the final act for Mr. Rumsfeld, a shrewd former businessman, two-time defence secretary and long-time Washington insider, who at 74 may now quietly retire to his ranch in Taos, N.M.

The only surprise is that Mr. Rumsfeld lasted this long. Just about everyone had called for his head, including several top former generals, many Republicans and, according to journalist Bob Woodward, even first lady Laura Bush.

"In the summer of 2001, people wondered whether he would last until the end of the year," said Richard Aboulafia, a defence analyst and vice-president of the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va. "Then Sept. 11 happened."

Mr. Rumsfeld arrived at the Pentagon in 2001, with a plan to carry out a sweeping transformation of the U.S. military. He wanted to create a lighter, faster force that relied more on high-tech gadgets and less on ground troops.

It marked the start of a tenure that has made him the most divisive Pentagon figure since Robert McNamara, defence secretary from 1961 to 1968 and architect of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

But unlike Mr. McNamara, who has since admitted to a litany of mistakes and false assumptions in Vietnam, Mr. Rumsfeld has steadfastly refused to acknowledge, or accept blame for, the failures in Iraq.

"The real failure was that when the bill came due for Iraq, Rumsfeld was still talking about making do with what we have," Mr. Aboulafia said.

Mr. Rumsfeld's downfall, he said, is that a lighter, faster force may have been good for invading Afghanistan and Iraq, but it wasn't a strategy for the long, hard slog of reconstruction.

"There's a fundamental contradiction between fighting a war and transforming the military. We still need a large military, and he never accepted that. He thought one step ahead, when two steps were needed."

Ultimately, Mr. Rumsfeld's legacy will be judged on what happens in Iraq in the years ahead, and that remains in doubt, said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org in Washington.

He said Mr. Rumsfeld clearly failed to devise a workable strategy for dealing with the period after the invasion -- disbanding the Iraqi army, failing to put enough troops on the ground to maintain stability, not foreseeing the strength of the insurgency and then purging the government of Baath Party loyalists.

Critics complain that while he's brilliant and a workaholic, Mr. Rumsfeld is also brash, argumentative and self-important.

Mr. Woodward, in his new book State of Denial, said one close adviser canvassed top Pentagon officials to get their candid views of their boss and found a very different portrait of Mr. Rumsfeld. Coworkers complained he's indecisive, trusts almost no one, is exceedingly cautious and refuses to accept that others are as smart as he is.

In public, Mr. Rumsfeld could be funny, folksy and entertaining. But he could also confound persistent questioners, with Abbott-and-Costello-like responses that left reporters scratching their heads.

In 2002, speaking about the Afghan war at a briefing, he said: "As we know, there are known knowns.

"There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Fond of giving advice -- to reporters, aides and others -- Mr. Rumsfeld's biggest failure may be in not taking all of his own advice.

His 1980 book of rules recommended this nugget for working in the White House: "If you foul up, tell the President and correct it fast. Delay only compounds mistakes."