{"id":242,"date":"2003-03-30T11:12:52","date_gmt":"2003-03-30T11:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/?p=242"},"modified":"2003-03-30T11:12:52","modified_gmt":"2003-03-30T11:12:52","slug":"whos-to-blame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/2003\/03\/30\/whos-to-blame\/","title":{"rendered":"Who’s To Blame?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s surely not a good sign, especially so early in the war, for the generals and the secretary of defense to already be laying the groundwork for passing blame. Is there any better way to tell when a war is going badly?
\nFirst, anonymous Pentagon officials spread disparaging comments about Rumsfeld:
\nReport: Rumseld Ignored Pentagon Advice on Iraq<\/a>
\nReuters (via Yahoo! News)<\/p>\n

“He thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn,” the article quoted an unidentified senior Pentagon planner as saying. “This is the mess Rummy put himself in because he didn’t want a heavy footprint on the ground.” It also said Rumsfeld had overruled advice from war commander Gen. Tommy Franks to delay the invasion until troops denied access through Turkey could be brought in by another route and miscalculated the level of Iraqi resistance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then, Rumsfeld drops a subtle comment during a news briefing, shifting responsibility for the war back onto General Tommy Franks.
\nPentagon News Briefing Transcript<\/a>
\nNew York Times Online (reg. required)<\/p>\n

Rumsfeld: “Well, we’re one week into this and it seems to me it’s a bit early for history to be written, one would think. The war plan is Tom Franks’ war plan. It was carefully prepared over many months.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ultimate responsibility, of course, lies with neither man, but with the commander-in-chief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s surely not a good sign, especially so early in the war, for the generals and the secretary of defense to already be laying the groundwork for passing blame. Is there any better way to tell when a war is going badly? First, anonymous Pentagon officials spread disparaging comments about Rumsfeld: Report: Rumseld Ignored Pentagon… Continue reading Who’s To Blame?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-policy-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5heLP-3U","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}