Thursday, February 3, 2011

Rummy's Revenge

Former Secretary of Defense (twice), White House Chief of Staff and Congressman Donald Rumsfeld's memoir will hit the streets in under a week.  It is a read I will not miss.

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.

2 comments:

  1. 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?"

    In 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.

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  2. Dan - To quote virtually every Family Feud contestant:

    "Good answer! Good answer!"

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