Rumsfield will always be tarred by wanting, on Sept. 10. '01, to transfer $600 million from counter terror to missile defense, of all the useless boondoggles we fund.
And he still hasn't shown he knows what he is doing.
Too many people on FR go all glass-eyed just because the guy has a colonel carrying his briefcase.
Walt
Yeah, we're desperate, clueless, and have a moron as Secretary of Defense. That's a different perspective, for sure.
Hindsight is 20/20, so I wouldn't be so quick to criticize him for that. I've known for some time that the biggest long-term concern in the U.S. government is how we are going to deal with Islamic nations with fully-functional nuclear arsenals, including Iran, Pakistan, and -- get this -- France.
The Soviet Union is a fact of life that we have to live with.
If we try to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, we'll have sixty thousand Americans sent home in body bags.
The Afghans have successfully driven out every foreign invader, the Taliban will drive us out too.
. . . Your babbling here reminds me of a book I read by a Russian military officer, in which he remembered hearing about the Six-Day War over his state-controlled radio station. According to the propaganda, the Arabs were winning one smashing victory after another against the Israelis. However, when he looked at the map, he noticed that the sites of the battles were farther and farther away from Israel, and closer and closer to Arab capitals.
You'll notice that in this war, the US and British are suffering their 'serious setbacks' closer and closer to Baghdad.