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This whole episode is a great lesson in why loyalty to friends regarding things like WAR is a very very bad policy for a president.

In hindsight, this war was doomed to its current status by the shameful gagging of General Shinseki - the only guy at CENTCOM who insisted that Rumsfeld was flat out wrong in his troop estimates needed for the invasion and aftermath. He appeared before the Armed Services Committee and made the mistake of telling the Senate panel that we needed in excess of 350,000 boots on the ground to manage the aftermath and seal the borders. Since Rumsfeld had such a hard-on for the light-and-fast military he envisioned, Shinseki got shuffled out and labeled not a team player. In fact, General McKiernan had to fight tooth-and-nail to get the invasion/occupation force we ended up with!

The problem was, Bush couldn’t bring himself to tell Rumsfeld to stop interfering with CENTCOM by ramming the light-and-fast invasion plan down their throats when they clearly weren’t on board. Bush was a loyal friend, but his loyalty blinded his better judgment to compel Rumsfeld to listen to battlefield experience and accept that the weight of CENTCOM’s recommendations were foolish to ignore.

I know we all love Rummy and his impassioned stand on Afghanistan and his desire to take it to the enemy, but the facts can’t be ignored - if Rumsfeld went along with 250,000 - 300,000 troops as requested by CENTCOM, we wouldn’t be agonizing over a “surge”, and quite possibly, this thing would be over. The lack of personnel needed to manage the transition will undoubtedly go down as one of the great military debacles of our time. And the buck really does stop with the President. So, if you ask me, Bush has brought this on himself. Loyalty does have its bounds. If he knew where to draw the line, we would be celebrating instead of agonizing.

IMHO.