OFFENSE AND DEFENSE
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
The battle between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon.
Issue of 2003-04-07
Posted 2003-03-31
As the ground campaign against Saddam Hussein faltered last week, with
attenuated supply lines and a lack of immediate reinforcements, there was
anger in the Pentagon. Several senior war planners complained to me in
interviews that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his inner circle
of civilian advisers, who had been chiefly responsible for persuading
President Bush to lead the country into war, had insisted on micromanaging
the war’s operational details. Rumsfeld’s team took over crucial aspects of
the day-to-day logistical planning—traditionally, an area in which the
uniformed military excels—and Rumsfeld repeatedly overruled the senior
Pentagon planners on the Joint Staff, the operating arm of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. “He thought he knew better,” one senior planner said. “He was the
decision-maker at every turn.”
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