Why the master tactician had to fall on his sword [View All]

[spindrifter]

The Times November 09, 2006

By Gerard Baker, US Editor

No one understands the brutality of Washington politics better than Donald Rumsfeld. He has practised a bit of it himself over almost four decades at the top. As a senior member of Richard Nixon’s Administration, then as the Chief of Staff and Defence Secretary for Gerald Ford, he gained a reputation as one of the most gifted of bureaucratic knife-fighters.

Back at the Pentagon under President Bush, and in alliance with his old friend Vice-President Dick Cheney, Mr Rumsfeld has proved adept at leveraging the harsh realities of politics to achieve ends that can leave colleagues bruised.

So he will have easily grasped the unforgiving logic that forced him out of the Pentagon after six turbulent years.

That did not prevent him sounding a note of bitterness in his brief appearance with President Bush. “I call to mind the words of Winston Churchill, who said, ‘I have benefited greatly from criticism and at no time have I suffered a lack thereof’.”

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2444442,00.html