Rumsfield stepping down?

[Thomas_B]

Rumsfeld is SECDEF, he reports to only one person: the POTUS. I doubt Bush gave him many orders on how to fight the war. Bush strikes me as a “hands off” type of administrator. He expected Rumsfeld and CENTCOM to fight the war. Bush would simply tell them to get it done.

In theory that’s true. But from reading Woodward’s books and newspaper accounts of the Iraq situation, I get the impression that some of the decisions that later turned out to be critical errors, such as de-baathification of the government and dismantling the Iraqi army, were more the ideas of policy thinkers like Wolfowitz a few other guys at DOD and the State Department, with buy-in from Cheney. But then I hadn’t heard that Rumsfeld actively argued against these proposals either. Also, his lean post-war military presence and lack of post-war planning is generally acknowledged as a big mistake. So yes, I agree, Rumsfeld definitely shares in the responsibility for the current terrible state of Iraq.