Rummy admits Iraq shortcomings

IT HAS BEEN A few weeks since the Democrats won control of Congress for the first time in more than a decade.

As some of you will recall, the day after the election, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned from his post.

Rumsfeld has long been a lightning rod for the administration from a number of quarters, including the military establishment, which by many accounts is unhappy with the organizational changes he initiated.

It seems perfectly logical that Rummy’s decision to leave the Bush administration after the trouncing of the last election was motivated by the political plight of his party alone — and yet an intriguing new memorandum seems to be shedding new light on that choice.

In a memo released by the New York Times yesterday and apparently verified by the Pentagon, Rumsfeld strongly criticized U.S. strategy in Iraq just before his departure, writing that, “In my view it is time for a major adjustment. Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.”

The release of the memo, which was written one day before last month’s midterm elections, is significant not because it somehow recasts the national debate currently taking place over America’s future in Iraq.

Instead, it shows that even the Bush administration’s leading proponents and optimists on the war have realized that U.S. strategy there has failed miserably and now risks a large scale strategic or even military defeat.

In the memo, Rumsfeld elucidates a number of options in Iraq including the possibility of multi-party talks between the region’s major players. He stops short, however, of endorsing any single course of action.

Rumsfeld’s recognition of American policy failures in Iraq is important to the future direction of American policy because through its release it has become public knowledge.

The acknowledgement of the true crisis facing Iraq and, by extension, the United States, has always been what the Bush asdministration has tried to avoid, by even going so far as to deny up until recently that Iraq is in a state of civil war.

Right-wing pundits like Rush Limbaugh have strongly criticized NBC News’ decision in past weeks to begin using the term “civil war” to describe the ongoing conflict in Iraq, despite the strong evidence that the war is indeed splitting the country apart.

Rumsfeld’s memo will certainly not change the minds of the GOP’s “true believers” that glue themselves to Fox News and talk radio, but it will serve to further erode the administration’s credibility on the issue with the public.

The next major development in America’s debate over Iraq will come this week when the so-called “Baker Report” will be released, complete with recommendations from the bi-partisan commission that is expected to include a call to gradually pull back some amount of U.S. soldiers.

The debate is shifting from “staying the course” to how quickly the United States should withdraw from the country — and whether an end to the conflict can be achieved before both parties are forced to face voters in the 2008 elections.

President Bush may soon be the only man in Washington who believes the United States should stay in Iraq indefinitely — even if just “Laura and the dogs” are left supporting him, as Bob Woodward famously reported the President saying in his latest book.

This of course opens an interesting question about the timing of Rumsfeld’s departure.

The embattled Secretary of Defense managed to survive the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, despite offering his resignation twice to the President during that period.

Yet his resignation was only accepted after he had the gall to question the administration’s strategy and suggest a change in course.

It might be that despite all his failings, Rumsfeld only committed a fire-able offence in the Bush administration when he questioned its direction.

If that’s true, President Bush may very well go down as one of our nation’s most arrogant and shortsighted leaders in recent years — if not ever.

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