I've always said Don Rumsfeld was a fantastic Secretary of Defense, but a bad Minister of War. We'll see whether he mounts a defense of himself in this work.
Famous for his "Snowflakes", memos that asked incredibly inconvenient questions of the defense establishment, Rumsfeld has always been one of my favorites. I LOVED reading snowflakes, even the ones that made me want to take my eyelids and pull them over the back of my head--because I had to come up with some small part of a larger answer. He made that bureaucracy DANCE....he made people justify their programs, he made them add value.
His relationship with Colin Powell will be one of the things I am most interested in. Two HUGE power-brokers, made men of the highest order. Great stuff.
I had to answer one on "We haven't been attacked from the air since Korea -- why does the Army maintain a Short Range Air Defense capability?"
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the normal MFRs, briefings, analysis, etc, I always made the point that we haven't been gassed since WWI, but we still cart around Chem-Bio gear to the tune of $2.4 B in the POM.
Dan - To quote virtually every Family Feud contestant:
ReplyDelete"Good answer! Good answer!"