Quote:
Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
"[T]ell me, why should the president give more weight to what you all have said given, as I understand, you went to Iraq once, with the exception of Senator Robb. None of you made it out of the Green Zone. Why should he give your recommendations any more weight than what he's hearing from his commanders on the ground in Iraq?"
-- Jonathan Karl of ABC News, to the assembled "wise men" of the ISG
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Nice smart-ass sound bite, but who the heck says Bush was hearing anything from his ground commanders in Iraq?
Everything -- everysinglefuckingthing -- was filtered through Don Rumsfeld. After all, that was the chain of command. His absence, if Gates has a different style, may very well be a significant factor in making things better.
Rumsfeld was and is a very smart and hard-working man, but his ego and micromanagement proved disastrous with regard to the Iraq operation. They would have been relatively harmless in peacetime -- perhaps even helpful in enacting systemic reform -- but in a time of war you simply can't have the SecDef (for example) _personally_ managing the deployment (i.e. personally deciding precisely which units would deploy and when, with what personnel). It screws everything up.
S_A_M
