Look what they’re buying, Rumsfeld complained to (Secretary of State Colin) Powell at one point. They are buying these dumptrucks. They can take off the hydraulic cylinder that pushes the truck bed up and they can use it for a launcher for a rocket. You want to sell them the means to erect rockets to shoot at us or Israel?
For Christ’s sake, Powell said, if somebody wants to buy a cylinder to erect a rocket, they don’t have to buy a $200,000 dumptruck to get one!
This kind of top-level squabbling is common in Bob Woodward’s new book, Plan of Attack, though it’s mostly between the war-bent Rumsfeld and the more moderate Powell. In the months leading up to the attack on Iraq, Woodward makes it clear that Rumsfeld was determined to locate the needle in Iraq’s haystack – namely evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), the Bush administration’s stated reason for preemptive invasion.
You’ve met these characters before, if you watched the Iraq War coverage on TV. These are names familiar in the Bush circle. There are the war hawks – Vice President Dick Cheney, General Tommy Franks, Rumsfeld – frustrated warriors from the first Bush administration who, even before 9/11, viewed Iraq and Saddam Hussein as "unfinished business." There’s Powell, a "reluctant warrior" who stands as a voice of reason even as Bush’s war cabinet marches its way toward Baghdad. Then there’s Bush himself: depicted by Woodward as a bit green, unimpressed with details, guided more by a generalized moral vision – a vision solidified by 9/11 and conveniently expedited by war plans for Iraq.
In Woodward’s vision, it is chiefly Rumsfeld who, along with Franks, architects a new war plan, something more fast and flexible after the September 11 attacks. Rummy personally scraps the existing "Iraq War Plan," Op Plan 1003, left over from the 1991 Gulf War. In its place, he calls for a leaner US force, attacking not in stages but simultaneously, assisted by air support and CIA aid to opposition groups. He convinces Franks to shave down the necessary troop levels and invasion timetable by nearly half.
Rumsfeld sees himself as a skillful tactician, someone who foresees all the "assumptions" and errors in a plan of attack. He famously said, during one of his war briefings, "As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know." With his furious pace and gift for inscrutable statements worthy of Alice in Wonderland, Rumsfeld reminds us of The Mad Hatter, running around saying, "I’m late! I’m late! I’m late!"
Rumsfeld’s belief was that he could minimize US casualties by fighting a ground war in Iraq on the cheap, bolstered by improved US technology. This technology had been battle-tested, conveniently, in the invasion of Afghanistan shortly after 9/11. Many saw that invasion as, not only retaliation for the attacks, but as a training lesson for US forces. A sign that America was ready to flex its muscles in the Middle East.
(Curiously, few in Bush’s war cabinet besides Colin Powell had personal combat experience. Neither Bush, Cheney nor Rumsfeld had ever fought on an actual battlefield, whereas the more cautious Powell had served two tours in Vietnam.)
It’s a corporate kind of cunning that guides Rumsfeld. He is fond of catchy phrases like "shock and awe" – his term for a quick, massive attack that would cause Iraq’s leaders to surrender even before the ground troops kicked in. Rumsfeld comes across as an office bean counter, someone who plays games with people’s lives from the safety of the war room (though it is possible that 9/11 genuinely spooked him into thinking a "preemptive strike" policy was absolutely necessary).
Bush, meanwhile, comes across as a less-molded version of his father, Bush Sr., who at least had combat experience and was formally the head of the CIA. Behind Bush Jr.’s acquiescence to the war cabinet’s plans, we learn, is a simple belief in exporting democracy – a belief that some may find "darkly paternalistic." Bush’s reading matter prior to the Iraq buildup had been a biography of Teddy Roosevelt, another paternalistic American president who thought all the world needed was more US guidance.
Bush’s pronouncements can seem hopelessly outdated, almost condescending at times. ("I believe we have a duty to free people. I would hope we wouldn’t have to do it militarily, but we have a duty.") The optimism later proved erroneous as the US presence quickly turned into a focus of Iraqi anger.
Woodward makes it clear that a lot of the planning by Rumsfeld and Franks was made on the assumption that the Iraqi people would welcome the US with open arms, once they rolled into Baghdad. ("This important argument was based less on solid intelligence from inside Iraq than assumptions about how people should feel toward a ruthless dictator.") US leaders, historically, have had difficulty understanding why foreign countries fail to embrace US-brand democracy and ideals – rarely noticing that it’s the force-feeding itself that causes resentment.
Rumsfeld, the tactician, seems the most error-prone. Some of his "assumptions" (such as WMDs) never materialized, leaving one to question the value of US intelligence sources. Others were unforeseen, such as the simultaneous uprisings in several Iraqi cities that stretched US forces thin. The failure of Turkey and others to grant US fly-over rights, and the snubbing of the US alliance by Germany and France, were also surprises. But these did not deter Rumsfeld and the war cabinet.
Still, even someone like Rumsfeld must have been knocked for a loop by the current Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, which he chose to keep hidden from President Bush. US troops, stationed in the Iraqi tinderbox for over a year, no doubt started to feel they were as much prisoners as their local captives. Clearly, though there is no justification, many of the US servicemen must have vented their anger at seeing friends picked off, day by day, by humiliating their captives. This was a contingency that Rumsfeld, even in his exhaustive list of "assumptions" and "known unknowns," never saw coming.