Rage at Rumsfeld

Brendan Miniter:

"I think Director [of National Intelligence John] Negroponte has battles to fight within the bureaucracy, and particularly with the Department of Defense. DOD is refusing to recognize that the director of national intelligence is in charge of the intelligence community."--Sen. Susan Collins

On Sept. 10, 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld held a town hall meeting at the Pentagon and identified what he saw as the gravest threat to national security: the Pentagon's own bureaucracy. "With brutal consistency, it stifles free thought and crushes new ideas. It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk," he said. He may have underestimated both the size and tenacity of this foe.

In the opening pages of their new book about the Iraq war, "Cobra II," Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor quote the Sept. 10 speech to frame the battle that has raged inside the Pentagon for five years. As the nation has weathered the most deadly terrorist attack on its soil in history, fought a global war on terror and liberated two countries, there has been a battle inside the Pentagon over the size, organization and weaponry of the U.S. military. And that battle has only intensified as the bureaucracy that Mr. Rumsfeld chastised for being stuck in a Cold War mindset has picked up allies in Congress, the military and in some quarters of the administration. It is this coalition that is now pushing for Mr. Rumsfeld to be fired.

But it's not just the defense secretary's head the former generals, anonymous leakers and senators are after. This is a classic Washington turf and policy war. In the balance is the nation's ability to fight the war on terror and confront other threats around the globe. One of the more significant theaters of this war has been waged in the intelligence community. Two years ago at the behest of the 9/11 Commission, Congress created the director of national intelligence to sit atop the CIA, FBI and other intelligence gathering agencies. In theory the DNI would improve the nation's ability to collect, analyze and disseminate information about national security threats. In this process Congress was cheered on by the Bush administration's normal critics in the media.

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The creation of the DNI like the creation of DHS has not helped to fight the war on terror. If anything it has made it more difficult. By making their arguments with Rumsfeld personael, the former generals have lsot their most persusive points, which would be a disagreement over how a war should be fought. Clearly they lost that debate with the other generals who persuaded Rumsfeld to do it their way. Now they blame Rumsfeld instead of themselves.