The seventh of 20 excerpts from "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq" by Thomas Ricks: The root cause of the occupation's paralysis may have been the cloud of cognitive dissonance that seems to have fogged in [Defense Secretary] Rumsfeld and other senior Pentagon officials at the time. They were not finding what they had expected: namely, strong evidence of intensive efforts to develop and stockpile chemical and biological weapons, and even some work to develop nuclear bombs. Meanwhile, they were finding what they had not expected: violent and widespread opposition to the U.S. military presence. There were no big battles, just a string of bombings and snipings that were killing U.S. troops in ones and twos, and also intimidating the Iraqi population.
But U.S. officials continued to speak about Iraq with unwarranted certainty . . .
More than at any other time in the painful history of the U.S. intervention in Iraq, even more than during the formulation of the war plan, the late spring [of 2003] was the point at which Rumsfeld might have made a difference. . . . Instead, Rumsfeld's self-confident stubbornness made him a big part of the problem. The defense secretary's vulnerability wasn't that he made errors, it was that he seemed unable to recognize them and make adjustments.
© 2006, Thomas E. Ricks. All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment