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One of the greatest of the mistakes to have been made in Iraq was the extraordinary US-led decision to disband rather than reform the Iraqi police and army, thereby creating a security vacuum that has never been properly filled since. This was a victory for the so-called neo-conservative ideologues in Washington, led by the political appointees in the Pentagon.

Don't take that statement at face value before you've read this thread, which gives a completely different view on this. Looks like the former ambassador is trying to defend his chums in Foggy Bottom.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1127955/posts

(Rumsfeld's war, Powells's occupation)

On the other hand much of the back-ground info in this article supports the general drift of the linked thread.

Rumsfeld's War
by Rowan Scarborough
Regnery Publishing, Inc.; ISBN: 0895260697
Hardcover - 256 pages (March 2004)

The man in the cockpit fighting the war on terror.

When terrorists crashed a plane into the Pentagon, he was there—helping carry the wounded to safety. And he’s been there—leading the war on terror, directing its operations around the world in both open and covert missions, and bluntly focusing on one primary goal: killing terrorists. He is Donald Rumsfeld. His great fear was a second Pearl Harbor. When it happened on September 11, 2001, he led the charge to make sure it never happens again.

This book takes you inside Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, detailing the far-sighted, courageous decisions he has made to enable our military to fight this most unconventional of wars. Rowan Scarborough, veteran national security reporter for the Washington Times, has had access to Rumsfeld himself as well as to numerous never-before-released documents that show not only how Rumsfeld is fighting the war, but how he is fighting the bureaucracy and remaking the American military, shifting the focus from the ingrained “can’t-do” bureaucracy to the special operations Green Berets, SEALs, and others who live by “can-do.”

Many of Rumsfeld’s hard-won victories are revealed here for the first time. Scarborough interviewed scores of Rumsfeld’s friends and colleagues, including former president Gerald Ford, economist Arthur Laffer, former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and many military personnel. He also provides details of some highly secretive Pentagon operations—carried out under Rumsfeld’s supervision by groups that most Americans don’t even know exist. In addition, Scarborough offers an enlightening comparison between Rumsfeld’s decisiveness and willingness to act and declare a war on terror and the Clinton administration’s lassitude, distraction, and treatment of terrorism as a law enforcement issue during al Qaeda’s astonishingly rapid rise in the 1990s.

Scarborough concludes that history will surely judge Rumsfeld as “one of America’s most important defense leaders.” Rumsfeld’s War reveals why—and how much of the bold new military strategy and vision that we are implementing now in the war on terror we owe to one brilliant, brave, and tenacious man: Donald Rumsfeld.

HIGHLY recomended! This book is not juat a puff piece about Rummy, unlike Midge Decter's book. It shows the man good and bad side. Worth the price just for the appendix.