And who was the lead politician in the US pushing for the surge to demonstrate US resolve to stay the course?
McCain.
I loathe him for campaign finance, amnesty and general back-stabbing. But I also will recognize that he exercised courage to push for the surge when doing such was widely viewed as political suicide.
Those Op tempos are what created the conditions of a vacuum of power that needed to be filled. That vacuum was going to be filled by someone....Thankfully at that point we had a CinC with the stones to push for us being the ones to fill it with more boots on the ground. But the notion that the "Surge" won Iraq, is from mostly people who have no idea what was taking place on the ground in Iraq in 05/06. Rumsfeld was part of the main leadership pushing for those increased Op Tempos in 05/06.
Here are some additional realities regarding SecDef Rumsfeld. It was Rumsfeld who shoved, pushed and dragged the Big Green (Army) into serious modernization with the ability to fight effectively via a smaller footprint where/when/if necessary. A tremendous capability that did not exist in 01.
It was SecDef Rumsfeld who demanded an alternative Op plan for Stan (after Sept 11th) instead of the ridiculous Op plan demanded by Gen. Shinzeki and the Big Green...Which called for 5 Divisions and a 6-8 month build up before we would be able to deal with removing the Taliban and al-Qeade from Stan...(and don't forget the 82nd's demand for bowling alley's before they wanted to play)...
It was SecDef Rumsfeld who demanded for all services to integrate and push the priority of CAS (which has saved thousands of U.S. lives to date...and killed thousands more of the enemy)..
It was also SecDef Rumsfeld who has turned our Shooters from SOCOM loose like never before.....and allowed them to rid themselves of risk-adverse OGAs for their own Intel gathering.....It was SecDef Rumsfeld who got SOCOM authorized as its own war-fighting command.....(which of course hurt many feelings in the Big Green...as now they are often tasked as "support" for SOCOM...and not the other way around).
SecDef Rumsfeld supported a light footprint doctrine when it made sense. Both in Stan and for the original phase of OIF it made sense to go with the numbers we went with (and many conveniently leave out the fact that the 4th ID sat off shore because State couldn't pull its d*ck out of its own pants once again and make Turkey cooperate) during the start of OIF.
Since Sept 11th, 2001 our enemies have suffered one strategic defeat after another.....we have not suffered one. Two brutal regimes (and sponsors of terrorism) have been removed, 3/4 + of AQ original leadership is captured or dead....Ditto that percentage of their less effective replacements....We have killed ten's of thousands of jihadists ..and we started the process of dragging the ME out of the dark ages....with the values of self-worth and freedoms taking root in both Iraq, Stan and beyond...
The dirty little secret is that it was/is AQ and their mimics who cannot fight an effective two-front (multi-front) wars....We most certainly can, have been, and will continue to do so as long as we allow our warriors to fight them. SecDef Rumsfeld understood thisp perfectly and fought continually for us to do just that.