Donald Rumsfeld: Genius or Hero?

[norml]

Donald Rumsfeld: Genius or Hero?

Commentary: The Defense Secretary clearly knows something about “fantasyland.”

By Art Levine


Photo: KRT/George Bridges

April 18, 2006

“I do not believe Secretary Rumsfeld is the right person to fight that war based on his absolute failures in managing the war against Saddam in Iraq.”
-- Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr.(ret.), quoted in the New York Times, April 18, 2006.

“It is just not useful to get into fantasyland.”
-- Donald Rumsfeld, commenting at an April 11 press conference on reports of Iran war plans.

Donald Rumsfeld apparently knows something about “fantasyland.” Here’s the way he imagined the U.S. attack on Afghanistan and the Iraq war would turn out by now, as it might be reported by the New York Times:

RUMSFELD'S TRIUMPH
Three years later, Iraq’s success confounds critics, wins praise. Stable, prosperous Iraq affirms new DOD strategy.

By Michael Gordon
Published: April 19, 2006
News Analysis

WASHINGTON, April 19, 2006 – A little more than three years after the invasion of Iraq, which went forward amid a chorus of criticism, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is riding a new wave of respect and praise from both inside and outside the Pentagon. As the retired Mideast commander, Marine Corps Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the former head of the United States Central Command, said on Meet the Press recently, “You’ve got to admire him for sticking to his guns. Rumsfeld ignored the nay-sayers who said it couldn’t be done his way, and he turned out to be right.”

In Baghdad, Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi presides over a national unity government where the once-fractious Sunni, Shia and Kurdish religious groups are working together in a prosperous post-Saddam Iraq, with oil production soaring more than 300% over pre-war levels. In fact, the war and reconstruction effort, which the then-White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsay famously speculated might cost as much as an astounding $200 billion, has largely been self-financed through Iraqi oil revenues since the bulk of U.S troops left in September, 2003. “There’s a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money,” Mr. Rumsfeld’s then-deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, the World Bank president who won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize for his work promoting democracy in the Mideast, presciently told Congress in 2003. And to the surprise of some Congressional critics who direly forecasted a Vietnam-style “quagmire,” under Mr. Rumsfeld’s direction the departing U.S. military left behind only a token force to offer support and technical assistance to a well-regarded 400,000-man Iraqi Army.

The role of the highly disciplined Iraqi army, beaten down by years of tyrannical rule under Hussein, has been perhaps the biggest success story of Mr.Rumsfeld’s strategic plan. Surprisingly supportive of U.S. goals, many Iraqi field-level soldiers eventually returned to their posts following the initial demobilization of the entire Iraqi army and its Baathist leadership, a strategic move approved by Mr. Rumsfeld to show the populace that the U.S. was dedicated to ending torture and oppression practiced by the old Iraqi Army. (This only added to the sometimes boisterous adulation of the U.S. troops in Iraq displayed in street demonstrations.) The enthusiastic new and returning troops that made up the rebuilt Iraq Army were then offered short but effective “refresher courses” by U.S. military advisors.

The result of all this reform? The Iraqi soldiers have quelled virtually all remaining resistance from a relative handful of “dead-enders,” as Mr. Rumsfeld calls them, in the once-notorious “Sunni Triangle,” which served as Hussein’s stronghold. The strength of the U.S.-backed Iraqi forces and the growing popular support for the democratically-elected Chalabi regime also effectively deterred efforts by Al-Qaeda and its allies, including the now-isolated Jordanian fugitive Musab Al-Zarqawi, to gain a foothold in Iraq. Bin Laden’s capture in Afghanistan in December 2002, of course, was a propaganda coup that undermined terrorist recruiting and the spread of Islamist ideology worldwide.


snip


http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2006/04/rumsfelds_fantasy.html

[ShortnFiery]

1. Forgot a couple of other choices:

3) Demon from Hell;

4) Psychopathic Ghoul.

[paparush]

2. CAPTION: "I vant to suck your blood..."

[ShortnFiery]

4. This was published in Mother Jones?!?

"As for Mr. Rumsfeld himself, the Pentagon’s success in Iraq :wtf: against long odds and harsh criticism has given him new confidence in fighting Washington’s bureaucratic wars, softened by a newfound modesty. :puke:

He credits not only the Pentagon’s sound strategy for victory but good fortune as well. “Stuff happens,” he said.

This is CRAP! :grr:

[norml]

7. I guess you must really be fiery. Hi, my DU name is norml

(AKA Brian), and often I don't explain things.

However I do see that by post 6, you had caught on.

Happily, Mother Jones has not betrayed you, and neither have I.

[lectrobyte]

3. Almost as funny as Colbert's "Bush -- great or greatest president?"

[patdem]

5. Ya know, whatever is actually PRINTED..this is what the bushbots

read into it all! Thanks for the "sarcasm" column twas great!

[ShortnFiery]

6. Yeah, we need all kinds SARCASM flags for this one because

what Rumsfeld's doing to the USA Military is an *ongoing tragedy.* :cry: