Rumsfeld: I'm going to finish my thought and then we're through.
Someone mentioned General Franks, or I did. I'm not -- I don't want to be critical of any one person or any newspaper, but we're going into a difficult period. And accuracy and precision on my part is important, and accuracy and precision on your parts is important. There's just an awful lot of mischief taking place around here.
I read an article that said that I overruled General Franks and -- because I was disagreeing, we were disagreeing, and I put General John Abizaid in as his deputy, so that we could keep track of what he's doing. That is absolute hogwash.
The truth is that what happened was that Paul Wolfowitz came to me and said that General Franks had come to him and said, "How do you think I could approach the Secretary of Defense about the possibility of my getting General Abizaid as my deputy, one of my deputies?"
And Paul said, "I don't know. He's not going to like it, because he likes him as director of the Joint Staff. He's doing a terrific job there. Dick Myers isn't going to like it, and Pete" -- (laughter) -- "and Pete Pace isn't going to like it. So you, General Franks, better figure out a way that you can make it so persuasive that you can get the secretary, the deputy secretary, the chairman and the vice chairman to agree to let this fine talent leave the Joint Staff" -- where he was doing tremendously important work and exceedingly well -- and go -- "and that he is the only one in the entire armed forces, Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, that can do that job for you. And that's not going to be an easy sell," he told Franks.
So, General Franks comes sidling up to you and sidling up to me and sidling up to Paul, and we said, "No! We need him here." And so, he goes away, and he comes back a week and a half later and does it again. He sidles up to all of us and he was persuasive. And finally we said, "Well, maybe. But not now." And we kept delaying it.