FYI, if you look through the long history of MedMech, his Rumsfeld pewrspective predated Iraq. His perspective comes from connections to career military and other gov folks.

It is a POV with which I am in partial disagreement, though not about Iraq, per se.

Rumsfeld took the slow evolution of the military, especially the Army and USAF that has been ongoing since Vietnam, and accelerated it greatly. With the USAF he has forced them to a greater tactical relationship with ground forces. He has forced integration of USAF officers and NCO's into front line (and special forces) to force greater coordination. That has worked stunningly well. In Vietnam in often took over a day for the USAF to respond to Army requests for ground support. In Iraq and Afghanistan they can project hellish, accurate response in minutes to precisely where ground forces need force applied.

Rumsfeld is also forcing all of the services to integrate more seamlessly. This is especially evident in the special operations command. In special operations Rumsfeld has tremendously increased capability and manpower.

Rumsfeld has forced retirement on officers who stand in his way. Most of the time that's a good thing. Remember that ours is a civil, not military government. If the military doesn't like civilian leadership then retirement is a great opportunity for them.

Sometimes forcing change through the Pentagon has resulted in dumb or bad things. Whenever the gov does something dumb or bad, people get hurt. When the DoD does dumb or bad things, people die. Those bad and dumb things accrue to the civilian leadership more than the military. That would be Rumsfeld.

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