Rummy and Tommy's dangerous obsession

Washington Monthly, May, 2006 by Charles Peters

Another new book about our follies in Iraq, Cobra 2, by Michael Gordon and Lt. Gen. (ret.) Bernard Trainor, makes clear that both Donald Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks were obsessed with demonstrating that Baghdad could be taken faster and with smaller forces than many military experts thought prudent.

They were right about that, but unfortunately it made them not want to face the danger of bypassing fedayeen irregulars along the way. They were warned that these forces posed a dangerous threat by Maj. Gen. William Wallace, who was threatened with dismissal for his trouble. Rumsfeld himself decided to cancel deployment of the First Cavalry Division, which would have been of important help in preventing the chaos immediately following our "victory."