Should He Stay?

Herbits warned Rumsfeld that policy Undersecretary Douglas J. Feith was screwing up. The fighting between the State and Defense departments was so bad that interagency meetings were at times little more than shouting matches. Postwar planning was so fiercely off track that it required the secretary's personal intervention.

Rumsfeld didn't say much, but soon he called a surprise Saturday meeting with Feith and others involved.

"What's going on here?" he asked. "We've got to get this on track."

It later became clear that one of the root causes for troubles in postwar Iraq was the lack of security, and that that was the result of the chronic shortage of troops faced by U.S. commanders.

The record showed that the plan for invading Iraq had a top number of 275,000 ground combat troops, including about 90,000 who were scheduled to flow into Iraq in the weeks and months after March 19, 2003, when the war began.

Earlier this year, I asked Rumsfeld about the troop levels.

He said it is one of the great "canards" that he had decided or unduly influenced the decision to not bring in the 90,000. It was all on Franks's recommendation, he said. "He made a judgment that he had what he needed, or would have as this played out, and that he would not need the additional ones that were in the queue. . . . And he made that recommendation and I made the recommendation to the president, and we agreed with it." So the 90,000 additional ground troops were not sent for the war or stabilization.

The critics -- or the "opiners," as Rumsfeld called them, "the people who don't have responsibility for making the decisions" -- don't understand, he said.

"Many of them say, 'Oh, it's Rumsfeld,' as though I'm sitting around with a black box figuring all this out. And anyone who knows me or watched me do anything knows that I don't do it that way. I come here to this job knowing that there's no one smart enough to do this job." So he relied on "smart people," he said, and on "advice from multiple sources."

But half a dozen of the generals and civilians who worked most closely with Rumsfeld made it clear in interviews that it was Rumsfeld who was making the decisions.

By this summer, Rumsfeld had softened his position on the issue of whether there were enough troops.

"It's entirely possible there were too many at some point and too few at some point, because no one's perfect," he said in another interview. "All of us that were trying our best to make these judgments were doing it in a context of concern about having enough to get the job done, and enable a process, political and economic process, to go forward, and not so many that it persuaded people that we were there to steal their oil and occupy their country and disrupt and cause disturbances in the neighboring countries that cause the overthrow of some of those other regimes. And so we made the best judgment we could.

"In retrospect, I have not seen or heard anything from the other opiners that suggests to me that they have any reason to believe that they were right and we were wrong. Nor can I prove we were right and they were wrong. The only thing I can say is they seem to have a lot more certainty than my assessment of the facts would permit me to have."

One of the harshest critics of what happened in Iraq as the security situation deteriorated and the insurgency intensified was Rumsfeld's own aide, Herbits.

On July 15, 2004, Herbits sat down at his computer and wrote another memo, a scathing seven-page report titled "Summary of Post-Iraq Planning and Execution Problems." Though he discussed the postwar planning and policies, and the tenure of L. Paul Bremer III as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, his real target was his friend of 37 years. The memo listed a series of tough questions:

· "Who made the decision and why didn't we reconstitute the Iraqi army?"

· "Did no one realize we were going to need Iraqi security forces?"

· "Did no one anticipate the importance of stabilization and how best to achieve it?"

· "Why was the de-Baathification so wide and deep?"

"Rumsfeld's style of operation," Herbits wrote, was the "Haldeman model, arrogant" -- a reference to President Richard M. Nixon's White House chief of staff, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman.

"Indecisive, contrary to popular image," Herbits wrote of Rumsfeld. "Would not accept that some people in some areas were smarter than he. . . . Trusts very few people. Very, very cautious. Rubber glove syndrome -- a tendency not to leave his fingerprints on decisions."

Herbits reached his crescendo: "Did Rumsfeld err with the fundamental political calculation of this administration: not getting the post-Iraq rebuilding process right within 18 months?"

A Worried General

Rumsfeld's relationship with his own generals only worsened.

In the summer of 2005, Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones, the NATO commander, paid a call on his old friend Gen. Peter Pace, then the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It was virtually certain that Pace was going to move up to replace Myers as chairman, the top position in the U.S. military.

Jones expressed concern that Pace would even want to be chairman. "You're going to face a debacle and be part of the debacle in Iraq," he said. U.S. prestige was at a 50- or 75-year low in the world. He said he was so worried about Iraq and the way Rumsfeld ran things that he wondered if he himself should not resign in protest. "How do you have the stomach for eight years in the Pentagon?" he finally asked.

Pace said that someone had to be chairman. Who else would do it?

Jones did not have an answer. "Military advice is being influenced on a political level," he said. The Joint Chiefs had improperly "surrendered" to Rumsfeld. "You should not be the parrot on the secretary's shoulder."

Pace became chairman, and later flatly denied Jones had told him that Iraq was a debacle. "He's a good friend. He was in my wedding," Pace said, noting they had known each other for 36 years. "If Jim felt that way, he would tell me."

I called Jones at NATO headquarters in Belgium. He said that he had made all those comments to Pace in their meeting in 2005. "That's what I told him," he said.

The First Lady's Concerns

Every six weeks or so, Card tried to have a private, candid session with first lady Laura Bush to hear her concerns.

The first lady was worried that Rumsfeld was hurting her husband, and her perspective seemed to reflect Rice's concern about Rumsfeld's overbearing style and tendency to dominate. Card knew that the first lady and Rice often took long walks together on the Camp David weekends.

"I agree with you," Card said. On one level he was trying to educate and explain, but he was also lobbying. So he outlined his problems with Rumsfeld and said he believed it was time for a change.

"Well, does the president know about that?" she asked. Was Card being candid with her husband?

Card said he was. "That's why I'm arguing." He said, however, that so far his advice on the Rumsfeld situation had been considered and rejected.

"He's happy with this," the first lady said, "but I'm not." Another time she said, "I don't know why he's not upset with this."

Card's relationship with Rumsfeld was always difficult. Last year, in the days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans with devastating effect, Bush decided more troops were needed and asked Card to relay the message to Rumsfeld.

"You know I don't report to you," Rumsfeld said.

"I know you don't report to me," Card replied. "You report to the president. But believe me, he would like you to do this."

"I'm not going to do it unless the president tells me," Rumsfeld told the chief of staff. Too many strains and obligations were being placed on the National Guard.

Card protested that he had just talked to the president, who had made an absolute decision.

"Then he's going to have to tell me," Rumsfeld said.

"Hey," the president said to Card later. "Rumsfeld called me up. I thought you were going to handle that."

One More Try

After Thanksgiving 2005, Card made another concentrated effort to get the president to replace Rumsfeld. He didn't want the president to have blinders on. Many Republican and Democratic leaders were telling Card privately that they just could not deal with the secretary of defense. He was arrogant and unresponsive.

Card was also hearing from members of the old foreign policy establishment connected to the president's father -- the Gray Beards, he called them -- who were complaining more and more.

"Who's going to do the job?" the president asked Card.

Card again mentioned Baker.

"How do we get Roger Clemens back into the game?" Card asked, comparing Baker to one of the all-time great pitchers, who had retired from baseball only to come back for another year with his hometown team. "He can still pitch," Card said about Baker.

Bush reminded him that they were at war. Rumsfeld was transforming the military, hadn't been insubordinate and needed to get the new Pentagon budget approved. Replacing him would be disruptive to the upcoming Iraqi election on Dec. 15.

"Interesting," the president said nonetheless. "Interesting."

But the president would not even authorize Card to send out feelers or to enter into any discussion with Baker. Rumsfeld would stay.

Bill Murphy Jr. and Christine Parthemore contributed to this report.