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Decline and Fall: Donald Rumsfeld's Dramatic End

Donald Rumsfeld came to the Pentagon with a plan to transform the Defense Department. Then America went to war with Iraq.

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The story of Rumsfeld's final months in office shows the secretary slow to accept a shift in strategy, despite being pressed by others in the administration to reexamine basic assumptions. Retired general Jack Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff on friendly terms with Rumsfeld, urged the embattled Pentagon leader in a lengthy discussion to change course but made little headway. Eric Edelman, the Pentagon's own top civilian policy adviser, also had growing reservations about the existing strategy, but recalls feeling largely shut out of the tight connection between Rumsfeld and his field generals, who were of like mind about staying the course.

Rumsfeld's difficulty in adapting to the challenges of Iraq -- a difficulty that had plagued him from the start of U.S. military operations there -- was all the more curious given his famous penchant for questioning and probing. He was often restless with the status quo, innately suspicious of conventional wisdom, prone to look at all the angles and imagine what could go wrong before embarking on a path. Yet with Iraq he got tied to a plan -- one that called for going in with a pared-down U.S. force and coming out as quickly as possible -- then had trouble moving beyond it as conditions changed.

This irony was compounded by another: Despite his reputation as a shrewd politician and skilled bureaucratic infighter, he burned so many bridges on Capitol Hill and strained so many relations in the administration that few apart from Cheney were willing to stand up for him in the end. Although he anticipated that he likely would have to leave after the U.S. midterm elections in November, Rumsfeld was not aware of the exact timing of his exit until shortly before his resignation was announced. Plans to make the announcement on Nov. 8, the day after the elections, were drafted several weeks in advance by the president's top aides without consulting Rumsfeld. Ultimately advised of Bush's decision, Rumsfeld quickly wrote a letter of resignation on Nov. 6. His wife and son helped type it up, without the knowledge of Rumsfeld's staff. Rumsfeld then personally delivered it to the president on Election Day.

As late as June 2006, Rumsfeld had remained wedded to plans to reduce U.S. forces in Iraq. The formation of a new Iraqi government under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, together with the killing in early June of al-Qaeda's top operative in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had buoyed hopes of a turning point. Whatever concerns Rumsfeld may have had about the possibility that all-out civil war still might erupt, he was sufficiently optimistic about Iraq's future to approve a drop in the number of U.S. combat brigades from 15 to 14, leaving 127,000 U.S. troops in the country.

"He knew there was sectarian violence, but he said Iraqis have to sort it out," said Edelman, who was the undersecretary of defense for policy.

But the loss of a combat brigade had not gone over well with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She considered any drawdown at that time unwise because of the risk that a fresh spike in violence could undermine the new Maliki government. For months, she and senior aides had been concerned about what they regarded as an overeager Pentagon rush to pull out of Iraq.

Rumsfeld used a surrogate to deliver the news to Rice that another brigade was coming out. He asked Edelman, a career foreign service officer on assignment to the Pentagon, to notify her of the move. Decisions about U.S. force levels in Iraq were not something that Rumsfeld tended to put before other members of Bush's national security team for consent. His practice had been to make such decisions with the president and then to inform his colleagues after the fact.

"He knew that she wasn't going to like" the latest decision, Edelman recounted. "So I got sent off to call her and tell her that we were going to take the brigade out."

And indeed, as Edelman recalls, Rice erupted at receiving the news. "What are you guys doing! You're going to destabilize Maliki!" she exclaimed.

"Look, Madame Secretary, I'm the messenger here. It's not my decision," Edelman replied, weakly.

It wasn't the first time Rumsfeld had used Edelman as a buffer with the secretary of state. Not infrequently, Rumsfeld would send him to high-level administration meetings when he expected some Pentagon position or action to come in for a tongue-lashing from Rice.


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