Rumsfeld's Right About the Leakers…

24 Sep 2002

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is getting angrier by the minute. "Anyone who knows anything isn't talking, and anyone who has any sense isn't talking. So by definition, anyone who is leaking [plans} doesn't know anything and has no sense!", he told reporters this week in Europe. And by golly, Rumsfeld's right again!

The comeback from the media is that the "plans" that have been reported and the planning that has been widely discussed in the media since last spring are very general. What has been reported doesn't really indicate what is or isn't going to happen, and how the U.S. Forces will or won't respond to events on the ground. There are many questions unanswered, branches and sequels ignored, possibilities unaddressed. It is actually quite confusing…

Yet the leaks continue.

Of course it could be part of the psychological operations campaign, some residual remnant of the now defunct Pentagon Office of Strategic Influence. Or…

Perhaps Mr Rumsfeld, in his inimitable way with a phrase, has given us the answer. Perhaps - as the secretary would never mislead the press - the actual plans HAVE been leaked! Perhaps the planners did leak the plans, all of them, in their entirety. That would make the Secretary angry! They are not very good plans, and it must be extremely frustrating, hearing such criticism and open debate regarding the innate and obvious deficiencies. The Pentagon war planners, meticulously controlled at every stage by the neocon team of those great heroes of combat and war strategy Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle and Shulsky - yes, Virginia, it sounds like a law firm, and there's a reason for that) have indeed worked long and difficult hours. But maybe, as Rumsfeld noted, they actually know nothing and have no sense when it comes to making a good war.