davefoc
Philosopher
Little hard to believe that there isn't a thread going on this, but in the off chance that the reason I couldn't find it was because there wasn't one, I started this thread.
OK, for anybody that hasn't read it yet here's a link to it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/world/middleeast/03mtext.html
There are many articles about it but here's some discussion by a blogger that I thought was interesting:
http://hotair.com/archives/2006/12/03/the-rumsfeld-memo/
My guess is that the leaker was Rumsfeld himself. My cut at this is that he wrote it at a time when he knew he was on the way out and he realized that most of his policy ideas with regard to Iraq were looking like crap right about now and he thought he'd just provide a laundry list of ideas so that if any of them were implemented he'd be able to claim that he suggested the idea even if he wasn't actually there to implement it.
As it is, I see the memo as a scary confirmation of what I thought already. Rummy was the wrong guy for his job. Most of the ideas that he listed were things that the US should have been analyzing and implementing assuming the analysis was positive for the last few years. He was the guy in charge why wasn't he working to see that his ideas were being analyzed and implemented if the analysis suggested a reasonable chance of effectiveness?
The answer seems to be either he was so mired in the assumed infallibility of his original ideas that he failed to notice when stuff turned to **** or he had little real power and he just went along with the Iraq fantasies of others to maintain the pretense of power. Either way, Rumsfeld ranks just behind Cheney in the list of people responsible for the Iraq fiasco IMHO.
OK, for anybody that hasn't read it yet here's a link to it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/world/middleeast/03mtext.html
There are many articles about it but here's some discussion by a blogger that I thought was interesting:
http://hotair.com/archives/2006/12/03/the-rumsfeld-memo/
My guess is that the leaker was Rumsfeld himself. My cut at this is that he wrote it at a time when he knew he was on the way out and he realized that most of his policy ideas with regard to Iraq were looking like crap right about now and he thought he'd just provide a laundry list of ideas so that if any of them were implemented he'd be able to claim that he suggested the idea even if he wasn't actually there to implement it.
As it is, I see the memo as a scary confirmation of what I thought already. Rummy was the wrong guy for his job. Most of the ideas that he listed were things that the US should have been analyzing and implementing assuming the analysis was positive for the last few years. He was the guy in charge why wasn't he working to see that his ideas were being analyzed and implemented if the analysis suggested a reasonable chance of effectiveness?
The answer seems to be either he was so mired in the assumed infallibility of his original ideas that he failed to notice when stuff turned to **** or he had little real power and he just went along with the Iraq fantasies of others to maintain the pretense of power. Either way, Rumsfeld ranks just behind Cheney in the list of people responsible for the Iraq fiasco IMHO.
