Posted 3:44 AM by Blah blah

Arrogant Donald Rumsfeld. More Arabs Get Pissed Off. The War Shifts Goals.

Sigh. Hubris again. Now our troops are suffering setbacks, delays, and danger because of the arrogance of this man. The war hawks call the peace mongers "unrealistic and naive." Yet who had the unrealistic expectations of Iraqi resistance and underestimated the difficulty of fighting guerilla warfare? I don't trust the hawks (Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, etc.) and fear they will get to screw up the post-war reconstruction.

On the plus side, we HAVE covered a lot of ground with relatively few deaths. We have reduced the problem of Iraq, a country the size of California, to the size of Connecticut. In only one week.

Report: Rumsfeld Ignored Pentagon Advice on Iraq:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly rejected advice from Pentagon planners that substantially more troops and armor would be needed to fight a war in Iraq, the New Yorker reported.

In an article for its April 7 edition, which goes on sale on Monday, the weekly said Rumsfeld insisted at least six times in the run-up to the conflict that the proposed number of ground troops be sharply reduced and got his way.

"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.

"They've got no resources. He was so focused on proving his point -- that the Iraqis were going to fall apart," the article, by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, cited an unnamed former high-level intelligence official as saying.
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More problems from Rumsfeld's big mouth:
Arabs Shocked at Rumsfeld's Syria Threat (LA Times):

In newspaper headlines, street interviews and among the Arab elite, the response was at first surprise and then angry resignation to what Arabs view as the blind aggression of the American administration.

However, most people also expressed puzzlement at why Rumsfeld would make such an antagonistic statement at a time when the United States' stock in the Arab world is already so low.

"Only a madman would think of widening the circle of war," said Information Minister Adnan Omran, a former Syrian ambassador to Britain who also spent several years in the United States as a diplomat.

In a press conference Friday, Rumsfeld charged Syria with sending night vision goggles to Iraq, along with other items, saying, "These deliveries pose a direct threat to the lives of coalition forces. We consider such trafficking as hostile acts, and will hold the Syrian government accountable for such shipments."

In the same press conference he accused Iran of aiding Iraq by allowing hundreds of fighters to cross its border into the country. His words were widely taken to mean that the United States was prepared to attack Syria and Iran unless they fell into line.

Rumsfeld's language seemed particularly oblivious to the public mood in Syria which has rallied enthusiastically behind Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's outspoken opposition to the war.
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War's Military, Political Goals Begin to Diverge (Washington Post):

Top Army officers in Iraq say they now believe that they effectively need to restart the war. Before launching a major ground attack on Iraq's Republican Guard, they want to secure their supply lines and build up their own combat power. Some timelines for the likely duration of the war now extend well into the summer, they say....

But as time goes by, other factors could force the U.S. military to act sooner. In four to six weeks, "there could be real problems" with food supplies in major Iraqi cities, said Ken Bacon, the former Pentagon spokesman who is president of Refugees International.

A war that lasts months may also leave a vacuum that could encourage trouble elsewhere around the globe, some generals and strategists worry. If the Pentagon does deploy into Iraq all the troops currently scheduled to go, about half the combat power of both the Army and the Marine Corps will be in Iraq. One senior general at the Pentagon said he is especially concerned that North Korea, which has been locked in a confrontation with the United States over its nuclear program, will attempt to capitalize on the situation.