And you’re right, we do miss Chrenkoff…

It’s been a long ime since you’ve taken a daily dose of “Good News From Iraq”. We don’t need to find a replacement for Rummy, we need a replacement for CHRENKOFF!!!

As you know, I recently returned from Iraq after a year. If you think that we were lean & mean, brother, you have no idea what’s coming down the pipeline. We are gathering so much lessons learned that it will take years to test, validate & incorporate them into our doctrine. Clauswitz would be so jealous.

Rumsfeld was correct when he more or less said you deal with the army you inherit. To his credit, he isn’t/hasn’t thrown up his hands in hopeless frustration.

Transformation is simply the biggest thing to ever happen to a legacy infrastructure. It would be tough to do even in a peacetime environment. Without a doubt, just as IT has transformed many businesses, the military is likewise leveraging that in ways unimagined for most folks even a few years ago.

Bottomline, if it wasn’t for Rumsfeld’s resoluteness in transformation, the younger cream of the crop wouldn’t have been able to flow their innovative ideas up the chain. Instead, the DOD would have reverted to their complacent “paleo-Powellian” might thru large forces mantra.

Normally I would agree with the notion that change for the sake of a fresh face can be good. But in this case, more particularily when one evaluates the alternate candidates, better to stick with the ‘progressive’ guy at the top. Of course there will be hits and misses–along with varying mileages–but until one actually tries, you just don’t know what works or doesn’t.

As for myself, I’d rather go with the leader that allows and empowers individuals to try anything and fail, than one where everyone is afraid of the bold & unorthodox.

using the phrase ‘stay the course’ for opponents of the war is a cop out.

We have changed strategy and assets so many times that what is lost in the phrase is that there have been hundreds of decisons with postive and negative results.

Bush using the phrase-stay the course-is basically saying we chnage as quickly as we can to adapt.

An opponent of the war-using ‘stay the course’-means they don’t know any specifics and are trying to appear up to speed.
Can anyone explain to me what ‘stay the course’ actually means to them?

I will say that from the excerpts of the book that I’ve read, I think it’s a little odd that someone who had offered to resign twice (and so wasn’t completely adverse to the notion) survived a joint attack by the WH CoS, the NSA, her deputy, the Secretary of State and the dearly beloved First Lady. And that the end result was the Secretary of State got sacked and the NSA (who was lobbying the dismissal of the SECDEF) got promoted. And went on to work closely with the SECDEF. Odd indeed.

Mark, it might surprise you to learn that I’m not adverse to change. I would even posit that Mr. Rumsfeld is not adverse to change if there’s something material to be gained from the change. But there’s nothing particularly convincing or compelling here that recommends change for change’s sake given what’s at stake, and as those who are conversant with the transformation process are pointing out, it’s more than troop numbers in Iraq. Not unless you have a replacement who will be up to speed in less than a year, and the only such candidate I can think of is Cheney.

His plans for the Pentagon were to essentially create two seperate organs for two seperate purposes — a “Leviathan” to topple bad regimes and take care of “basket-cases” like Haiti and Somalia, and a “Systems Administrator Force” as a regime-builder. Right now, as we’ve seen in Iraq, the US military is very good at the former, but less than efficient at the latter.