David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George Bush the latter, writes:

"For a long time, war with Iraq was discussed inside the Bush administration as something that would be decided at some point in the future; then, somewhere along the way, war with Iraq was discussed as something that had already been decided long ago in the past."

By Col. Ted Spain, U.S. Army (Ret.)

Best Defense guest columnist

1. Secretary Rumsfeld's deployment plans did not include an adequate number of military police to control the routes during the ground war, nor sufficient military police to help control the streets after the ground war. This contributed to the Jessica Lynch fiasco and the chaos on the streets of Baghdad.

2. Law and order was not given sufficient attention in the pre-war planning. This failed to provide a police system to provide security to the Iraqi citizenry and to instill a sense of trust in the U.S. Army.

3. The categories of the thousands of detainees were never clear, causing confusion as to the proper legal treatment. Were they enemy, terrorist, or criminal? What's the difference?

4. The process of collecting intelligence from detainees was flawed from the pre-war planning sessions, during the ground war, and during the subsequent occupation. This set the stage for abuse, including the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal.

5. Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the warden of Abu Ghraib Prison, was the wrong leader at the wrong place at the wrong time. Her appointment resulted in scandal and loss of trust in American forces by Iraqi citizenry.

6. Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of all military forces in Iraq during the occupation, was in over his head and continued fighting the ground war long after it was over.

7. The Coalition Provisional Authority, under the leadership of L. Paul Bremer, dismantled the Iraqi Army and the highest level of the Ba'ath Party. We lost some of the most experienced personnel that were so vital in putting Iraq back together again.

8. Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik was more focused on padding his résumé and getting camera time than helping stand up a viable Iraqi Police Services.

9. Because standing up an Iraqi Police Service was focused on quantity, not quality, we never completely knew who we could trust.

10. President Bush's coalition of the willing was only a coalition in name. Even those that were willing were not able. Only a couple of countries contributed to gaining stability in Iraq.

Colonel Ted Spain commanded the U.S. Army's 18th Military Police Brigade during the ground war and first year of the occupation of Iraq. He was responsible for thousands of military police and Iraqi Police across Baghdad and Southern Iraq. He is the co-author, along with Terry Turchie, a former Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI, of Breaking Iraq: The Ten Mistakes That Broke Iraq, which is being published this week.

[Here are Parts I and II.]

Crist: I agree on the notion of the tendency of the U.S. military. In Vietnam, they used to call it the "Little Brown Man Syndrome," which is: The Americans come in and show you how to really fight your war. But I think with Afghanistan the fundamental problem is a lack of a long-term strategy. What do we want Afghanistan to do? And I see we sort of evolved into it without a lot of thinking.

The initial force went in; we got enamored with the idea of SOF [special operations forces], light footprint, using the Northern Alliance -- in fact we probably should have had more conventional forces. We missed a lot of opportunities as these guys skirted across Pakistan, and we, frankly, allowed them to do it because the Afghans wouldn't go after them. If they wanted to sit up in the hills, the Northern Alliance was more than happy to let them sit in the mountains, and we didn't have that capability.

Then the problem is, as we slowly evolve with, frankly, not a lot of thought -- if you look at the force incrementally increasing, it's not a well-articulated strategy. Then it comes to the point where, well, we have the force, we need to start doing this ourselves, and we sort of fall back on our natural patterns and tendencies and things that are comfortable with an effective military that likes to solve problems. So I lay it on the long-term strategy that went in in 2001.

Jabouri: Let me say something from my experience: I think American forces focus just on the enemy, on al Qaeda, and they forget about the people.

I think if you want to win the war against al Qaeda, you should protect the people first. The American forces always, in the beginning, in Iraq, they put their eyes on al Qaeda, and they don't care about the people. I think the security forces can't create the security without the long-term forces. If you now go to Kurdistan in Iraq, if you see the images, Kurdistan has very good security, but they do not have many checkpoints or forces. The people have, and the government has the security forces to keep the security. They are the people in other parts of Iraq, the people not interested in the security forces of Iraq because they do not have to create the security.

Ricks: This seems to go to Phil Mudd's question of space versus targeting, but it seems to me also to Colonel Alford's comments because one of the answers to reconciling space and targeting is to have local forces occupy the space, not American forces that alienate locals.

Dubik: But a strategy, correctly or not, a strategy that emphasizes local forces, building local conditions, is de facto a long-term strategy. It gets right back to the question of -- we backed into both these wars.

Ricks: Not unlike in Vietnam, where we put in ground troops originally to protect the air bases.

Dubik: And it sucked us in. We just backed ourselves into the problem we faced, and had we thought that the solution was going to be a 10- or 15-year solution, we certainly would not have committed. We would have changed many of the decisions that we made, but we didn't adopt the indigenous force because we thought we could solve it and leave.

Fastabend: I think the reason we do that consistently is, as I hinted at in my question (I really liked your question; I'll explain to you why), is because we think strategy and we keep strategy, and our theory of strategy is the linkage of ends, ways, and means, which is how I got here, which is how I'll do my job tomorrow.

It is pablum; it is a way to avoid making a real choice, so no one in or out of the government ever said to themselves, "Let's decide what we're going to do. Are we going to target individuals regardless of space, or are we going to go in there and have space?" No, what we said is, "We need a stable government in Iraq, so therefore, you need a stable government in Iraq." Deductive logic tells you that you need to control everywhere in Iraq. And then you have to worry about the security forces; you've got to make sure they've got border patrols. And we never went back to the fundamental choice about what do we really need to do. We hide choices. We never talk about choices because choices are hard and choices mean making a decision. Choices mean taking responsibility for who makes the choice and which choice they take -- and that, in my view, is the biggest flaw we have institutionally in this country, is we've got very shallow theory and doctrine about what strategy really is.

Ricks: This is a great comment.

(Much more to come)

Here is the first part of a transcript of a conversation held at the Washington offices of Foreign Policy magazine in January of this year. A shorter version, with full IDs of the participants, appears in the current issue of the magazine. This is the full deal, edited just slightly for clarity and ease of reading, mainly by deleting repetitions and a couple of digressions into jokes about the F-35 and such.  

I had asked each participant to bring one big question about the conduct of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I began. We began with those. 

Thomas E. Ricks: One of my favorite singers is Rosanne Cash, a country singer who is Johnny Cash's daughter, who has a great line in one of her songs: "I‘m not looking for the answers-- just to know the questions is good enough for me." And I think that is the beginning of strategic wisdom: Rather than start with trying to figure out the answers, start with a few good questions.

So what I'd like to start by doing is just go around the table with a brief statement -- "I'm so-and-so, and here's my question." So, to give you the example: I'm Tom Ricks, and my question is, "Are we letting the military get away with the belief that it basically did the best it could over the last 10 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that civilians in the government screwed things up?"

Philip Mudd: I guess my question is: "Why do we keep talking about Afghanistan when we went in 12 years ago, we talked about a target, al Qaeda. How did that conversation separate?"

Maj. Gen. David Fastabend (U.S. Army, ret.): My name is David Fastabend, and my question is: "Do what we think, our theory and doctrine, about strategy -- is that right? Could we not do a lot better?"

Rajiv Chandrasekaran: Rajiv Chandrasekaran, got a lot of questions. I suppose one among them would be, "How did the execution of our civilian-military policies so badly divert on the ground at a time, at least over the past couple of years, when there was supposed to be a greater commonality of interests in Washington?"

Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik (U.S. Army, ret.): I'm Jim Dubik, and my question's related to Rajiv's and Tom's: "How do we conduct a civil-military discourse in a way that increases the probability of more effective strategic integration in decisions?"

Shawn Brimley: Shawn Brimley. I have a lot of questions, but one that keeps coming to mind, being halfway through Fred Kaplan's book, is: "How did we, collectively, screw up rotation policy so badly that we never provided our military leaders the chance to fully understand the reality on the ground before they had to rapidly transition to a new colonel, a new brigadier, a new four-star?"

Maj. Gen. Najim Abed al-Jabouri (Iraqi Air Force, ret.): My name is al-Jabouri. As an Iraqi, I have a different view of 2003. I was a general in the Iraqi Air Force, so I wanted to shoot down your airplanes. After 2003, I was a police chief and a mayor, so I wanted your help to build my country. In the last 10 years I have learned that America has a great military power. It can target and destroy almost anything.

However, I have also learned that it is very difficult for America to clean up a mess it makes. Leaving a mess in someone else's country can cause more problems than you had at the beginning. Military operations in Muslim countries are like working with glass. If you do it right, it can be beautiful and great, but if you break it, it is difficult to repair or replace. My question is: "Do American strategy planners understand the consequences of breaking the glass, and if so, do they know what it will take to repair or replace the broken glass?" Thank you.

Col. J.D.  Alford, USMC: My name is Dale Alford. I too have many questions, I guess, but I'm going to stay a little bit in my lane and I'm going to talk about the military. My question would be: "Can a foreign army, particularly with a vastly different culture, be a successful counterinsurgent? And if not, why haven't we switched and put more focus on the Afghan security forces?"

David Crist: My name is David Crist, and a bunch of people had very similar lines of thought to what I was going to use, so I'll take a common complaint that James Mattis says all the time and frame that into a question: "Do our commanders have time to think? Think about the issues and the information -- in some ways they have to be their own action officer. Do they have time to sit back and think about the issues with the op tempo going on and just the information flow?"

Michèle Flournoy: I have two, and I can't decide which one.

Ricks: You get both.

Flournoy: I get a twofer? So the very broad, strategic question is: "How do we ensure that we have a political strategy that takes advantage of the security and space that a military effort in counterinsurgency can create? How do we ensure that the focus remains primarily there while we resource that aspect?" Kind of a Clausewitzian question.

Second is a much more narrow question, and we have the right people in the room to reflect on this, which is: "What have we learned about how to build indigenous security forces in a way that's effective and sustainable?" I mean, this is a classic case where we reinvent the wheel, we pretend like we've never done it before, we pretend like there aren't lessons learned and good ways -- and less effective ways -- to do this. So: "Can we capture what we know about how to build indigenous security forces?"

Susan B. Glasser: I have a question of my own that's particularly for the people with a military background in this room, which is: "In September 2001, if you had told us that in 2013 we are going to be in Afghanistan with 65,000 American troops and debating what we accomplished there and how quickly we can get out, how many more years and how many billions of dollars we'd have to pay to sustain this operation, my strong sense is that there would have been an overwhelming view in the U.S. military -- and among the U.S. people more broadly -- that that was an unacceptable outcome. So, if we can all agree that 13 years was not what we wanted when we went into Afghanistan, what did we miss along the way?"

(more to come...)

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on March 1, 2011.

Few people know the ins and outs of the Bush Administration as well as the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, who is flat-out disgusted with the evasions and elisions in Donald Rumsfeld's new book. Here he explains why:

By Bob Woodward
Best Defense guest columnist

On page 527 of his memoir Known and Unknown, Donald Rumsfeld recounts what he says was an exchange on Oct. 14, 2003 with Condoleezza Rice who was then Bush's national security adviser. She apologized for a flap over Iraq policy at the time.

You're failing," Rumsfeld said.

"Don, you've made mistakes in your long career," she replied.

"Yes, but I've tried to clean them up," he said.

Rumsfeld's memoir is one big clean-up job, a brazen effort to shift blame to others -- including President Bush -- distort history, ignore the record or simply avoid discussing matters that cannot be airbrushed away. It is a travesty, and I think the rewrite job won't wash.

The Iraq War is essential to the understanding of the Bush presidency and the Rumsfeld era at the Pentagon. In the book, Rumsfeld tries to push so much off on Bush. That is fair because Bush made the ultimate decisions. But the record shows that it was Rumsfeld stoking the Iraq fires -- facts he has completely left out of his memoir.

For example, I reported in my 2004 book, Plan of Attack (p. 25), that at 2:40 p.m. on 9/11, with the smoke and dust still filling the Pentagon, according to the notes of two of Rumsfeld's top aides, Rumsfeld mused about whether to hit "S.H. @ same time," not only bin Laden. One note taker reaffirmed this in an interview with the 9/11 Commission, and said that "S.H." referred to Saddam Hussein. (p. 335 of Commission report, and p. 559 footnote 63). None of this is in Rumsfeld's book. But he does cite the aides' handwritten notes for other quotations he uses in his book to recount that day. (p. 343 of his book, and p. 759 notes 30, 31 and 32. The notes are of senior Rumsfeld aides Victoria Clarke and Stephen A. Cambone.)

On January 9, 2002, four months after 9/11, Dan Balz of The Washington Post and I interviewed Rumsfeld for a newspaper series on the Bush administration's response to 9/11. According to notes of the NSC, on September 12, the day after 9/11, Rumsfeld again raised Iraq saying, is there a need to address Iraq as well as bin Laden?

When Balz read this to Rumsfeld, he blew up. "I didn't say that," he said, maintaining that it was his aide Larry DiRita talking over his shoulder. His reaction was comic and we agreed to treat it as off the record. But Balz persisted and asked Rumsfeld what he was thinking.

"Yeah," Rumsfeld finally told us. "I wanted to make sure that -- I always ask myself, what's missing. It's easy for people to edit and make something slightly better. But the question is, what haven't we asked ourselves? So I do it all the time. I do it here, I do it in cabinet meetings or NSC meetings. It was a fair question."

"I don't have notes," Rumsfeld insisted. "I don't have any notes."  His memoir cites his personal handwritten notes dozens of time.

One of the important questions about the Iraq War has always been about when and who started the Iraq clock after 9/11. On page 425, Rumsfeld alleges that Bush on Sept 26, 2001 -- just 15 days after 9/11 -- called him to the Oval Office. "He asked that I take a look at the shape of our military plans on Iraq..."  Rumsfeld provides no footnote for this scene.

When I interviewed Rumsfeld at his Pentagon office on Oct. 23, 2003, Rumsfeld had a different story. "I do not remember much about Iraq being discussed at all with the president or me or the NSC prior to when the president asked me to -- asked me what I thought of the Iraq contingency plan -- that I believe was November 21st of '01." He was confident of the date because six days later he went to talk with the combatant commander for the region, Gen. Tommy Franks. "And I would not have waited long from the president asking me."

White House records and President Bush's recent memoir, Decision Points, support the Nov. 21 date. "Two months after 9/11 I asked Don Rumsfeld to review the existing battle plans for Iraq," Bush wrote, placing the request in November 2001 (p. 234)

The question of the date is not just a matter of whether something occurred on a Monday or a Thursday. On Sept. 26, 2001, the Bush administration was focused on Afghanistan. The first CIA team had just entered and the bombing had not yet begun. By his own account Rumsfeld was intensely trying to figure out how to begin the military aspect of Afghanistan War with bombing and inserting Special Operations teams.  

At a Camp David meeting on Sept. 15 -- eleven days before Rumsfeld says Bush made his first Iraq war plan inquiry -- Bush rejected going after Iraq. In fact, Rumsfeld himself writes, that "at the September 15 NSC meeting at Camp David days earlier when Iraq had been raised he [Bush] had specifically kept the focus on Afghanistan." (p. 425)

According to Rumsfeld, on Sept. 21, he and General Franks "drove over to the White House to present his initial operational concept" for Afghanistan (p. 370) and a more detailed approach was given to Bush on Sept. 30 (p. 373). It is inconsistent with everything known that in the middle of all that planning and anguish over Afghanistan, Bush would raise Iraq on Sept. 26.

However, by Nov. 21, the United States had had unexpected success in Afghanistan and controlled half the territory. Thousands of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters had fled the capital Kabul into Pakistan. If Bush were looking for another target -- and he clearly was -- that would be the time, not on Sept. 26.

Another key question: When did Bush finally decide to commit the United States to war? Rumsfeld writes, "Up until the very minute the president authorized the first strike [March 19, 2003] there was no moment when I felt with razor-sharp certainty that Bush had fully decided." He does describe a meeting Jan. 11, two months earlier, when he met at the White House with Cheney, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers, and Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Rumsfeld quotes Cheney telling Bandar, "The president has made the decision to go after Saddam Hussein." In his book Rumsfeld adds, "Of course, Bush would not irrevocably decide on war until he signed the execute order." (p. 450)

According to my reporting, Cheney went further in that meeting, telling the Saudi ambassador, "Saddam is toast." In addition, General Myers outlined the battle plan from a Top Secret map.

When I interviewed Rumsfeld on Oct. 23, 2003, less than a year after that meeting, he said he "looked him [Bandar] in the eye and said, you can count on this. In other words at some point we had had enough of a signal from the president that we were able to look a foreign dignitary in the eye and say you can take that to the bank this is going to happen."

All other evidence shows that at least by Jan. 2003, Bush had decided on war. Earlier that month he told Rice, "Probably going to have to, we're going to have to go to war." That month he also told Karl Rove, his top political adviser, who was planning for the re-election campaign the next year, "We got a war coming."

As numerous accounts have documented, the post-war planning and organization was close to a disaster. Rumsfeld blames the lack of "effective interagency coordination" and "the way the United States government is organized." (p. 487)

As secretary of defense he was responsible. Under our system, he was next in the chain of command after the president, effectively making him the deputy president for war. But he sidestepped his responsibility time and time again.

Some six weeks after the invasion Rumsfeld visited Iraq and was leaving on his plane. He had been notified by General Tommy R. Franks, who was retiring as combatant commander for the region, that Army Lt. Gen. David McKiernan "would be the senior commander in Iraq for 90 days." (p. 497) He then recounts this scene, which would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic:

On my flight heading back to Kuwait City I was startled to see McKiernan onboard the C-130 aircraft. I asked him where he was going.

"To my headquarters back in Kuwait," he said.

"Well, aren't you in charge of what's going on in Iraq?" I asked.

McKiernan told me he went in and out of Iraq once, sometimes twice a week to check on things. It struck me that in the crucial weeks following the fall of Saddam, McKiernan did not seem to think of himself as the command in charge of the ground operations ... McKiernan seemed to have removed himself from the critical daily responsibilities in the country.

Rumsfeld makes no effort to explain how he, the well-known control freak, would allow such drift and ambiguity about who was in charge. 

By June 2003, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the junior three-star in the Army was made commander in Iraq (p. 500-01). "I do not recall being made aware of the Army's decision to move General Sanchez into the top position," Rumsfeld writes. The Army's? It was an abdication of his own, clear responsibility.

Though Rumsfeld occasionally praises Bush, a careful reading shows that he clearly feels that Bush did not lead enough. "NSC meetings with the president did not always end with clear conclusions and instructions," he wrote on page 319, seemingly directing his fire at Rice. "The core problems the NSC faced resulted from the effort to paper over differences of views."(p. 329). But then he takes aim right at Bush, "I thought it unlikely that Rice was managing the NSC as she did without Bush's awareness and agreement."

And so the book marches to the end. Chapter 49, the seven pages covering his firing by Bush as the secretary of defense, is called "Farewells." He launders the whole episode. Because he was willing to resign, he makes it sounds almost voluntary when Cheney calls to tell him that Bush wants "to make a change." When he meets with Bush (p. 707) to submit his resignation letter, Rumsfeld writes with classic condescension, "I tried to make the situation easier for him." It was almost, he subtly and deceptively suggests, as if Bush didn't want to do it. He writes that Bush told him, "This is hard for me. You are a pro. You're a hell of a lot better than others in this town."

Rumsfeld is indeed a pro -- at ducking and weaving and dodging responsibility, a reflection of much of what is worst in Washington.

Near the end of the Oct. 23, 2003 interview -- page 39 of my transcript -- this interchange took place, illustrating the worst and the best of him:

Rumsfeld: "And you lie, you told people I stuck a finger in your chest. I never stuck a finger in your chest."

Woodward: "Yes, sir, yes, yes."

Rumsfeld: "I never touched your chest."

Woodward: "I swear you did."

Rumsfeld: "Did I?"

Woodward: "Yeah, you did."

Rumsfeld: "Physically?"

Woodward: "You did, physically, it wasn't hostile you were illustrating a point."

Rumsfeld: "Good."

Woodward: "I explained that. I thought you scored a very good point."

Rumsfeld: (laughter)

Woodward: "Which was about surprise and off balance."

Rumsfeld: "Oh yes, I did. I remember that you're right ...Yeah, right, you are right ...I said you got to get a little off balance -- I've done that. He's right, I'm wrong."

He had moved from calling me a liar to acknowledging that my memory was correct and his wrong. He probably should have been more tentative at both the front end and the back end, but there it was, Rumsfeld in full.

On July 7 and 8, 2006, I conducted nearly three hours of interviews with Rumsfeld. Near the end, I heard the final denial.  I quoted Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara who had said, "Any military commander who is honest with you will say he's made mistakes that have cost lives."

"Is that correct?" I asked.

"I don't know. I suppose that a military commander --"

"Which you are," I interrupted.

"No, I'm not," Rumsfeld said.

"Yes, sir," I said.

"No, no well ..."

"Yes, yes," I said, raising my hand in the air and ticking off the chain of command. "It's commander in chief, secretary of defense, combatant commander."

He said, "I can see a military commander in a uniform who is engaged in a conflict having to make decisions that result in people living or dying and that that would be a truth. And certainly if you go up the chain to the civilian side to the president and to me, you could by indirection, two or three steps removed, make the case."

I quoted this interchange in my third Bush book, State of Denial, and then wrote: "Indirection? Two or three steps removed?" This was truly inexplicable. It was as if he could not see himself and realize that he was avoiding his duty. When all the records are available, the other memoirs written and the history complete, this failure to accept responsibility will likely be his legacy.

Andrew Bacevich, one of the more interesting thinkers around, has a good piece with some other cats proposing a independent, non-partisan commission "to evaluate the military experience of the past decade." They call for an examination of five particular aspects: The design of U.S. combat forces, the U. S. global military footprint, the national security apparatus, the civil-military gap and how top jobs have been filled.

This strikes me as a worthwhile proposal.

Meanwhile, I finally caught up with Professor Bacevich's essay on Albert Wohlstetter, which contains this memorable two-cushion shot in reference to the revolution in military affairs, or RMA:

Joint Vision 2010 stands in relation to the RMA as Tom Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree stands in relation to globalization: it is an infomercial-marketing disguised as elucidation.

This is harsh, but I think he captures it well. I never thought I would be a citizen of a country that endorsed torture. It still makes me sad to think about that.

I will never think of America the same way after the Bush-Cheney administration. They ripped the scales off my eyes; they proved that America isn't, in the end, different; that its core moral principles, such as the prohibition of torture, are nostrums to be tossed aside at the whim of a few very scared and incompetent men; that the rule of law ends when it comes to presidential power, when he can simply order dipshit lawyers to say black is white; when no regret is ever truly expressed about the tens of thousands of Iraqis who died under US occupation; when the architects of these strategic and moral disasters are given legal immunity and peddle books on talkshows defending and bragging of their own awful legacy.

By Rickisha Berrien
Best Defense department of catastrophic change

Here's how three former officials -- one from the world of intelligence, the second from the Pentagon, the third from the State Department -- see how the world has changed since 9/11.

--Former Acting Director of the CIA John McLaughlin, speaking at the commemorative event at Johns Hopkins' School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), said he believes that within the last decade the intelligence community has faced the greatest period of change since the height of the Cold War. The decade before 9/11 was characterized by an emphasis on peace, and in the years before the attacks the ranks of the intelligence community were cut by about 23 percent. After the attack, McLaughlin says that it became evident very quickly that the war would be an intelligence war. This new kind of war necessitated key changes within American intelligence. First, within the last decade we have had unprecedented integration of intelligence and the U.S. military, providing us with new and powerful capabilities that we didn't possess 10 years ago. This new integration culminated in the takedown of Osama bin Laden. Second, since about 50 percent of the intelligence community today was hired after 9/11, we now have an intelligence workforce that has been trained and socialized during a time of war. This has not been the case since the time of the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA, during World War II. We do not know the ramifications that such change will have on the community in the years to come.

--Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman, addressing the same event, called a decade free from a domestic terror attack an "incredible achievement." The United States has succeeded in many areas in our War on Terror: al Qaeda is on the run and state sponsorship of terror organizations has greatly diminished. However, two major national security challenges still lay ahead of us: the emergence of new nuclear-armed states and the rise of China. Though we have had limited positive accomplishments in curtailing the nuclear threat, there is still a long way to go. Both Iran and North Korea are still rogue nuclear threats that the United States has yet to deal with successfully. Furthermore, the expansion of the Chinese military looms as an underappreciated threat to American influence in the Pacific. Edelman noted that the bipartisan defense panel on the Quadrennial Defense Review that he took part of last year came to the conclusion that "the ability of the United States to operate in the Western Pacific in the face of some anti-access and area-denial capabilities that China has developed has been called into question". This undercuts the ability of the United States to maintain the balance of power in Asia and Europe as it has since WWII.

--Former Counselor of the U.S. Department of State Eliot Cohen discussed whether the war on terror was indeed a war, and if so, what kind? He questioned the term itself, arguing that the U.S. government made a mistake by "casting this very broadly as a war on terror, which would be a little like the United States declaring war on dive bombers after Pearl Harbor. Terror is the tactic, not the enemy."

Few people know the ins and outs of the Bush Administration as well as the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, who is flat-out disgusted with the evasions and elisions in Donald Rumsfeld's new book. Here he explains why:

By Bob Woodward
Best Defense guest columnist

On page 527 of his memoir Known and Unknown, Donald Rumsfeld recounts what he says was an exchange on Oct. 14, 2003 with Condoleezza Rice who was then Bush's national security adviser. She apologized for a flap over Iraq policy at the time.

You're failing," Rumsfeld said.

"Don, you've made mistakes in your long career," she replied.

"Yes, but I've tried to clean them up," he said.

Rumsfeld's memoir is one big clean-up job, a brazen effort to shift blame to others -- including President Bush -- distort history, ignore the record or simply avoid discussing matters that cannot be airbrushed away. It is a travesty, and I think the rewrite job won't wash.

The Iraq War is essential to the understanding of the Bush presidency and the Rumsfeld era at the Pentagon. In the book, Rumsfeld tries to push so much off on Bush. That is fair because Bush made the ultimate decisions. But the record shows that it was Rumsfeld stoking the Iraq fires -- facts he has completely left out of his memoir.

For example, I reported in my 2004 book, Plan of Attack (p. 25), that at 2:40 p.m. on 9/11, with the smoke and dust still filling the Pentagon, according to the notes of two of Rumsfeld's top aides, Rumsfeld mused about whether to hit "S.H. @ same time," not only bin Laden. One note taker reaffirmed this in an interview with the 9/11 Commission, and said that "S.H." referred to Saddam Hussein. (p. 335 of Commission report, and p. 559 footnote 63). None of this is in Rumsfeld's book. But he does cite the aides' handwritten notes for other quotations he uses in his book to recount that day. (p. 343 of his book, and p. 759 notes 30, 31 and 32. The notes are of senior Rumsfeld aides Victoria Clarke and Stephen A. Cambone.)

On January 9, 2002, four months after 9/11, Dan Balz of The Washington Post and I interviewed Rumsfeld for a newspaper series on the Bush administration's response to 9/11. According to notes of the NSC, on September 12, the day after 9/11, Rumsfeld again raised Iraq saying, is there a need to address Iraq as well as bin Laden?

When Balz read this to Rumsfeld, he blew up. "I didn't say that," he said, maintaining that it was his aide Larry DiRita talking over his shoulder. His reaction was comic and we agreed to treat it as off the record. But Balz persisted and asked Rumsfeld what he was thinking.

"Yeah," Rumsfeld finally told us. "I wanted to make sure that -- I always ask myself, what's missing. It's easy for people to edit and make something slightly better. But the question is, what haven't we asked ourselves? So I do it all the time. I do it here, I do it in cabinet meetings or NSC meetings. It was a fair question."

"I don't have notes," Rumsfeld insisted. "I don't have any notes."  His memoir cites his personal handwritten notes dozens of time.

One of the important questions about the Iraq War has always been about when and who started the Iraq clock after 9/11. On page 425, Rumsfeld alleges that Bush on Sept 26, 2001 -- just 15 days after 9/11 -- called him to the Oval Office. "He asked that I take a look at the shape of our military plans on Iraq..."  Rumsfeld provides no footnote for this scene.

When I interviewed Rumsfeld at his Pentagon office on Oct. 23, 2003, Rumsfeld had a different story. "I do not remember much about Iraq being discussed at all with the president or me or the NSC prior to when the president asked me to -- asked me what I thought of the Iraq contingency plan -- that I believe was November 21st of '01." He was confident of the date because six days later he went to talk with the combatant commander for the region, Gen. Tommy Franks. "And I would not have waited long from the president asking me."

White House records and President Bush's recent memoir, Decision Points, support the Nov. 21 date. "Two months after 9/11 I asked Don Rumsfeld to review the existing battle plans for Iraq," Bush wrote, placing the request in November 2001 (p. 234)

The question of the date is not just a matter of whether something occurred on a Monday or a Thursday. On Sept. 26, 2001, the Bush administration was focused on Afghanistan. The first CIA team had just entered and the bombing had not yet begun. By his own account Rumsfeld was intensely trying to figure out how to begin the military aspect of Afghanistan War with bombing and inserting Special Operations teams.  

At a Camp David meeting on Sept. 15 -- eleven days before Rumsfeld says Bush made his first Iraq war plan inquiry -- Bush rejected going after Iraq. In fact, Rumsfeld himself writes, that "at the September 15 NSC meeting at Camp David days earlier when Iraq had been raised he [Bush] had specifically kept the focus on Afghanistan." (p. 425)

According to Rumsfeld, on Sept. 21, he and General Franks "drove over to the White House to present his initial operational concept" for Afghanistan (p. 370) and a more detailed approach was given to Bush on Sept. 30 (p. 373). It is inconsistent with everything known that in the middle of all that planning and anguish over Afghanistan, Bush would raise Iraq on Sept. 26.

However, by Nov. 21, the United States had had unexpected success in Afghanistan and controlled half the territory. Thousands of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters had fled the capital Kabul into Pakistan. If Bush were looking for another target -- and he clearly was -- that would be the time, not on Sept. 26.

Another key question: When did Bush finally decide to commit the United States to war? Rumsfeld writes, "Up until the very minute the president authorized the first strike [March 19, 2003] there was no moment when I felt with razor-sharp certainty that Bush had fully decided." He does describe a meeting Jan. 11, two months earlier, when he met at the White House with Cheney, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers, and Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Rumsfeld quotes Cheney telling Bandar, "The president has made the decision to go after Saddam Hussein." In his book Rumsfeld adds, "Of course, Bush would not irrevocably decide on war until he signed the execute order." (p. 450)

Read on

Greg Mitchell has a good piece on a soldier who killed herself after being pressed to participate in torture as part of interrogations early in the Iraq war. The piece strikes me as credible.

I do think that until there is a complete investigation of what was done in our names, in part by the military but mainly by civilians involved in intelligence, that the stain will be with us, mentally, politically and socially. We need a truth commission. 

The above photo is taken from the burial service of Spc. Alyssa Peterson.

I've long thought that this country was knocked off balance by 9/11, and that instead of steadying us, as leaders should, President Bush and Vice President Cheney led the panic, and so intensified and lengthened the period of disequilibrium. The Iraq war was one result -- and also a cause -- of the length of this period, because the hundreds of billions of unnecessary spending led to a huge borrowing splurge by the federal government. Essentially China paid for the war, and our children and grandchildren are on the hook to pay it back.

Adam Weinstein offers some thoughts on all this, from the perspective of a vet who was in lower Manhattan on 9/11 and also knew one of the pilots killed by the 9/11 hijackers.

Richard Armitage is an unusual guy in Washington -- both candid and well-spoken. He also has a talent for making the right enemies. Now he of thick neck and broad shoulders has given an interesting interview to Prism, which is some sort of new publication at the National Defense University. 

Some highlights:

• At first, the U.S. government was able to keep Pakistani intelligence from meddling in Afghanistan. "The second surprise was frankly how successful we were for the first 4 years-almost 5 years-at keeping the ISI [Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence] relatively out of it. They were so shocked with the speed at which we invaded Afghanistan that I think the ISI felt it was only a matter of time until we prevailed." Armitage's timeline here suggests to me that Afghanistan started really falling apart when the ISI went back in. That's an interesting conclusion

• He says Bush and his war cabinet never formally considered whether to invade Iraq. "Never to my knowledge, and I'm pretty sure I'm right on this, did the President ever sit around with his advisors and say, 'Should we do this or not?' He never did it."

• The Bush administration didn't understand democracy and how to encourage it. "The Bush administration's push for votes as though voting equals democracy was wrong-headed because a vote is something that happens inside a democracy, but is not necessary for a democracy. You can have a democratic system without having people raise their hands and have a secret ballot. Loya jirgas to some extent are these."

• He believes Bush administration actions undercut the American position abroad. "It's harder and made more complex when we abuse the writ of habeas corpus here or when we torture people."

• Reading  he recommends, and why:  "Have you read the novels of Naguib Mahfouz? They're great, and through them all you get a couple of things, I think. First, the good humor of Egyptians; they have enormous good humor. Second, patience and long suffering, but you realize that at some point in time you can't joke something away. You can't outwait it. I would be afraid the tipping point is going to come, and particularly now that the strategic center of gravity in the Middle East has shifted to Riyadh and away from Cairo."

Alex Wong/Getty Images

A thoughtful reader of this blog advises me to drop the Bush bashing. He thinks it is unseemly and looks like a sop to my leftist readers (do you hear me over there in the amen corner?)

His heart is in the right place, and so I promised to think on his note. I have. But what I keep coming back to is this: I think President Bush's decisions were so disastrous that we will be paying for them for years, particularly with Iraq. So I am inclined to keep pointing out the costs of what may have been the worst set of foreign policy decisions ever made. But I'd like to hear from readers: Is it time to put a moratorium on exploring why Bush may have been the worst president? Best post on this wins a free signed copy of any one of my books. If you've already got the complete set, then you can have my extra copy of Alistair Horne's The Price of Glory. 

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

I asked my old Washington Post colleague Brad Graham, whose new book on Donald Rumsfeld is just about out, to explain to me the difference between Rumsfeld and his successor, Robert Gates. Specifically, as some astute readers asked here the other day, why when Rumsfeld poses questions it is meddlesome micro-management, while when Gates does it he is being Churchillian?

Here is Brad's reply:

It does appear that Gates, who after succeeding Rumsfeld seemed bent on setting himself apart from his predecessor in approach and tone, has in some ways come to mirror him. The micromanaging and the overruling of the military chiefs are just a couple of examples. Indeed, as Ryan Henry, who worked under both Rumsfeld and Gates, told me when I was writing the biography, the longer Gates has served, the more he has come to understand why Rumsfeld was the way he was.

But in personal style, Gates has remained distinctly different from Rumsfeld, and this has been a key to his success. He has shown little of the arrogance, the dismissiveness, the discourtesy of his predecessor. He has managed to convey firmness and decisiveness without being overbearing and offensive. Most significantly, he has restored a measure of accountability without breeding deep resentment and making himself unpopular. While Rumsfeld in six years fired only one top official (Tom White), Gates in two-and-a-half years has already removed six (Harvey, Pace, Fallon, Wynn, Moseley and McKiernan). And yet Gates has none of the bullying, domineering image that Rumsfeld seemed to cultivate. Rather, he has demonstrated an ability to exercise strong civilian leadership with reason and just cause.

Significantly, too, Gates has brought a sense of balance to a Pentagon that Rumsfeld had kept in a swirl. His lack of flare and self-promotion have been a relief after the theatrics of his predecessor. In the Rumsfeld tradition, Gates has persisted in prodding the military to think outside its box. But he has taken a quieter approach and, at the same time, refocused the military transformation process. He talks less about what might be needed for future wars, placing more emphasis on current needs and on how to wage unconventional warfare better.

You didn't ask, but the question of Rumsfeld versus McNamara also may be of interest, since McNamara is the only other Pentagon leader whose term rivals Rumsfeld's for controversy. Both Rumsfeld and McNamara came to the Pentagon from the corporate world exhibiting arrogance and impatience, and both showed similar characteristics in office: keen analytical minds, insatiable appetites for data, predilections for new methods and approaches for problem solving. McNamara may have been more soullessly analytical, and Rumsfeld more intuitive, but both sought tighter civilian control of the military and ordered reappraisals of U.S. strategy. Both also brought with them contingents of civilian aides who shared their determination to shake things up and a propensity to clash with the Joint Chiefs. And both became embroiled in unpopular wars.

Where they differed most notably was in how they ultimately viewed their own tenures. Despite his public cheerleading for the Vietnam War, McNamara privately became dubious about its wisdom and effectiveness while still in office. In later years, he increasingly recognized that he had failed as defense secretary because of mistakes he and others had made in Vietnam. By contrast, Rumsfeld did not leave office doubting his handling of the Iraq War. He has acknowledged no major missteps or shown any remorse on the subject to date. Asked in my final interview with him last fall whether he harbored any regrets, Rumsfeld sounded tired of such queries. "Oh, that's the favorite press question," he quipped."