Rice vs. Rumsfeld

April 6, 2006

These two never fill me with confidence, but this kind of infighting just makes matters worse.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he did not know what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was talking about when she said last week that the United States had made thousands of “tactical errors” in handling the war in Iraq, a statement she later said was meant figuratively.

Speaking during a radio interview on WDAY in Fargo, N.D., on Tuesday, Rumsfeld said calling changes in military tactics during the war “errors” reflects a lack of understanding of warfare.

Last week, during a trip to England, Rice acknowledged that the administration had “made tactical errors” in Iraq, and added that there have probably been “thousands of them.”

Yesterday, Rumsfeld suggested that anyone with such a view lacks an “understanding” of “what warfare is all about.” Asked specifically about whether he agreed with Rice’s assessment, Rumsfeld replied, “I don’t know what she was talking about, to be perfectly honest.”

I seem to recall Bush arguing during the ’04 campaign that a John Kerry administration wouldn’t speak with one voice when it came to matters such as the war. It’s a good thing we dodged that bullet, isn’t it?

Ah, Rummy,

If you have a formerly successful tactic that the enemy has adapted to and that no longer works, using it before was not an error. (Keeping on using it is).

But if your tactics were failures from the start and you were told they would be failures before you started, than that is A BIG F**KING ERROR!

And that is what Rummy had from the start.

  • Here’s a joke:

    Person 1: “Did you hear about the fight between Condi & Rumsfeld the other day?”

    Person 2: “No. Who won?”

    Person 1: “Neither. They’re both losers.”

    End joke.

  • Anyone remember the Al Qa Qaa site? Here’s the point – Rummy was so focused on taking Baghdad, he instructed the generals to rush to “victory” without securing all of the ammo and weapons sites. Naturally, these formerly secure sites were looted and empty by the time the American troops returned. The insurgents got 380 TONS of high explosive from this site alone.

    Of course, he wouldn’t know about any mistakes, because HE has no undestanding of warfare. How many Americans & Iraqis have died or have been scarred for life because of this dumbshit?

    Anyone besides me like to see this guy in the docket at the Hague?

  • If Rummy knows so dmaned much about what modern warfare is all about, why are stuck in the Iraq quagmire until an indefinite future on someone else’s watch?

  • Grrr. These two don’t even have to open their mouths or f**k shit up at work to piss me off. The mere fact that they are still drawing checks is enough to send me over the edge…

    They are the two most incompetent idiots ever to hold a government post. No, wait, that’s Karen Hughes…no, Michael Brown. Or, Chertoff. Then there’s Doug “Stupidist…” Feith…

    [sigh]

  • It’s disappointing that no one has pressed Rice to name a single “tactical” mistake in Iraq. Figuratively or not, she must be able to name at least one.

    And hasn’t this damn excuse been beaten to death yet?

    Rumsfeld pointed to the nature of the Iraq war — unpredictable from the start — as the reason the United States has had to change tactics over the past three years.

    The State Department did predict the looting, the insurgency, the consequences of purging Baathists from government, and the threat of civil war. They were ignored, and that’s how the U.S. finds itself in the current pickle. Regardless, the U.S. is not a victim of forces beyond its control.

  • The pre-2004 election word’s of a person who is now an ex-friend keep coming back to me—“But Bush will make sure we are safe and he will always tell us the truth on national security issues. I just can’t trust Kerry.”

    Of course he could not say why he trusted Bush so much or could not trust Kerry. And now all this. America, land of ignorant bed-wetting frightened fools.

  • I think Rummy’s right. Rice doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

    Besides, it’s not tactical errors that were made (implying armed forces errors) so much as it was strategy errors which lie directly at the feet of Rummy.

  • I must say that it still took long for Rumsfeld to respond. When I heard Rice saying this in Blackburn last week, it was the first thing what ran through my mind: “I wonder whether Rumsfeld will be happy with these remarks.” And how unsurprising, he is not.

    On the other hand, it feels like Rice is making some sort of case for the State Dept. Like she is trying to say: my people aren’t that bad, we were right all along. We predicted this mess, and now it has indeed come to this. Which also points out that the unity within the administration is getting worse and worse, and that most cabinet-members are doing nothing but defending their own department and their own people in the Iraq-debate. You’d rather see they stop this infighting and try to develop a vision on how to solve the problem. Oh, I forgot. They haven’t got a clue.

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