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Beware Rumsfeld's Snow JobThe former defense secretary's revisionist op-ed.

By Fred KaplanPosted Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2008, at 5:55 PM ET

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Later in the Times op-ed, Rumsfeld argues that the surge was a matter of timing—that had he sent more troops sooner, they would not have accomplished anything. The implication is that Rumsfeld was right when he decided not to send more troops—and he was right toward the end, when he had no choice and signed on.

Rumsfeld notes that the surge improved Iraq's security only because it coincided with other developments. These included the "Anbar Awakening," in which Sunni insurgents formed alliances with U.S. troops against the larger enemy of al-Qaida in Iraq; the improvement of Iraq's own security forces; and the cease-fire called by Shiite militia leader Muqtada Sadr. The surge wouldn't have worked earlier, he writes, "because large segments of the Sunni population were still providing sanctuary to insurgents, and Iraq's security forces were not sufficiently capable or large enough."

He's right, but the real meaning of what he's saying—though he wouldn't put it so starkly—is that an earlier surge wouldn't have had much effect because the U.S. military (i.e., Secretary Rumsfeld) had no counterinsurgency strategy to go with it. In fact, until very late in the game, Rumsfeld refused even to call the enemy "insurgents"—because if he did, he would have had to mount a counterinsurgency strategy, which would have required more troops, and he had no interest in that.

A few field officers pursued a strategy on their own, to the extent they could. Early in the occupation, David Petraeus, who was then a lieutenant general commanding the 101^st Airborne Division, carried out such a strategy in Mosul, facilitated in large part by a huge stash of Saddam's cash, which Petraeus and other commanders were permitted to spend on restoring basic services and paying off tribal leaders who cooperated. (When the money ran out, Mosul started to fall apart.) H.R. McMaster, who was then a colonel commanding the 3^rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, ran a similar, more comprehensive strategy in Tal Afar.

The problem was not that Iraq wasn't ready for a surge before 2007; it was that Rumsfeld and his top generals at the time weren't doing anything that might make Iraq ready. They were very slow and unimaginative at training the Iraqi army. And they had no ideas about how to convince the Sunnis to stop sheltering insurgents, besides banging down doors and shooting people without thinking first—a practice that created more insurgents than it killed.

Another misleading claim in Rumsfeld's op-ed: "During my last weeks in office, I recommended to President Bush that he consider Gen. David Petraeus as commander of coalition forces in Iraq."

This may be true. Again, Rumsfeld has no doubt rustled up a memo in which he said just that. However, note that he writes that he made this recommendation "during my last weeks in office." He left the job, and Robert Gates took his place, on Dec. 18, 2006. The timing is unclear, but it may well be that by the time Rumsfeld "recommended" him, Petraeus was already the all-but-certain pick.

One thing is clear: In November, just a month earlier, in one of his final official acts, Rumsfeld blocked Bush's chief of staff Josh Bolten from appointing Petraeus to chair a White House review of Iraq policy. "Rumsfeld loathed Petraeus," one officer who worked high up in the Pentagon at the time recalled in a phone conversation this week.

Is Rumsfeld lying in this op-ed? No. He did support the surge—after (or perhaps just before) Bush put it in motion and after firmly opposing anything like it for the previous three years. He did recommend Petraeus to be commander of multinational forces in Iraq—after the appointment was in the cards and after blocking him from a crucial position on Iraq a few weeks earlier.

During his six years as defense secretary, Rumsfeld famously wrote hundreds, maybe thousands, of memos to subordinates—they fell so rapidly from on high that his aides called them "snowflakes." According to several officials, many of these snowflakes contradicted one another; he seemed to be staking out several positions on key issues so that he could later claim that he'd taken the right side. In his forthcoming memoirs, he will no doubt quote chapter and verse from just the right snowflakes. Readers, be forewarned—he's blotting out the full storm.