The only apology necessary to Rumsfeld's critics should be the one for not making the "Triangle" a great big glass table.
I'd rather not get the apology... Offense intended.
But Rumsfeld argued that the Army's plan would take too long and was not sufficiently transformational. Gen. Shinseki's successor as Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, whom Rumsfeld called out of retirement to assume the post, has begun to implement a vision far more in keeping with that of the secretary.
But he and Rumsfeld have faced fierce resistance from the Army establishment. Before the Iraq war, Rumsfeld's one victory over that establishment was the cancellation of the Army's Crusader, an artillery system Rumsfeld disparaged as too big and bulky for the sort of mobile, rapidly deployable military he envisioned for the future.
Many of the same Army generals (active and retired) who had fought Rumsfeld on the Crusader and other issues were openly critical of his war plan for Iraq, arguing that it called for too few troops and tanks. Thus in the public mind, Rumsfeld's commitment to Army transformation came to be seen as the reason the Army did not deploy enough troops to Iraq. According to this view, the Army is the bill payer for Rumsfeld's policy of transforming the U.S. military to a smaller, high-tech, information-based force.
This view is not quite correct, in my opinion. While I can't speak for the entire Army (Unlike the Marines, Army views tend to be all over the map), I think that despite the fight over Crusader, most now agree that cancellation was the right decision. However, The Army strongly believes that Rumsfeld had bought into the single strategy syndrome mentioned in this article. An aviation centric strategy with a small expeditionary ground force (read USMC) would in future be sufficient. This left no real role for the Army and Rumfeld accordingly planned for Army force structure to be the bill payer for transformation. He intended to reduce the Army by 2 division equivilents, from 10 divisions to 8. That got the Army's dander up. But, what made it worse was that he used the war planning and deployment process to help build the case for his proposal. He approved CENTCOM's war plan, but then cut the forces available to the CENTCOM Cdr by disapproving the deployment orders necessary to get those forces into the theater. Many saw this as underhanded and a political ploy, something that should not be done in wartime. Since the details of these war plans were, and still are, classified; the public debate has been convoluted. But expect that some day there will be a tell all book that lowers the boom on some of these maneuvers.
That said, Rumsfeld has been getting a bum rap lately. He is really working hard to reform an acquisition system that is truly broken as evidenced by some of the glitches with uparmored HMMWV's, etc. The letters of condolence flap is a cheap shot, but also a self-inflicted wound, he shouldn't have done that. He is a very effective SecDef. He has now backed off most of his ideas that had the Army's nose out of joint, and he is doing exactly the right thing strategically in the fight against terrorism.
I don't like the guy, but I will stand behind him as long as the President does the same. The people who really deserve our scorn are the retired flag officer political pimps who signed onto the Kerry bandwagon and are now following the Dem Party marching orders and going after Gonzalez.