Rumsfeld's rulebook for attacking Iraq (In Orwellian: "foiling an attack"

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

New York Times Oct.14
Rumsfeld Favors Forceful Actions to Foil an Attack
By THOM SHANKER


WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in a personal
set of guidelines for committing forces to combat, wrote that America's
leaders must quickly judge when diplomacy has failed, then "act forcefully,
early, during the precrisis period" to foil an attack on the nation. If
those actions fall short, America must be "willing and prepared to act
decisively to use the force necessary to prevail, plus some," he wrote.

Mr. Rumsfeld's memorandum, written in March 2001 but updated as recently as
this weekend, said the nation's leaders must never "dumb down" a mission to
gain support from the public, Congress, the United Nations or allies.

In particular, he wrote, leaders must avoid "promising not to do things
(i.e., not to use ground forces, not to bomb below 20,000 feet, not to risk
U.S. lives, not to permit collateral damage, not to bomb during Ramadan,
etc.)." Such pledges simplify planning for a foe, he wrote, just as
artificial deadlines for American withdrawal allow an enemy to "simply wait
us out."

The Rumsfeld guidelines both echo and refine military thinking set down in
past years by Caspar Weinberger, President Ronald Reagan's defense
secretary, and by Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for
the first President Bush and secretary of state for the second.

For example, Mr. Rumsfeld wrote that American lives should be risked only
when a clear national interest is at stake, when the mission is achievable,
when all required resources are committed for the duration of combat - and
only after the nation's leadership has marshaled public support.
But the Rumsfeld guidelines can be read as diverging from eight years of
Clinton administration policy. During those years, the armed forces were
assigned a number of missions - from Haiti to Somalia to Bosnia to Kosovo -
that critics, often Republicans, said risked American lives for humanitarian
assistance, peacekeeping and democracy-building efforts that had less clear
benefit for American national security.

An early draft of the memo was obtained over the summer, but under strict
ground rules set by the person who provided the memo, it was meant for
informational purposes only and could not be published. Repeated requests
for Mr. Rumsfeld to discuss his thinking were made in the intervening
months, and he agreed this weekend to provide the current version of his
guidelines.

The two-page memorandum said that before committing military forces, the
nation must consider how it might affect American interests around the world
"if we prevail, if we fail, or if we decide not to act."  "Just as the risks
of taking action must be carefully considered, so, too, the risk of inaction
needs to be weighed," he wrote.

Shortly after being sworn in as defense secretary for President Bush, "I sat
down and I said, `You better have a damn good reason if you're going to put
somebody's life at risk. What ought we be thinking about?' " Mr. Rumsfeld
said in an interview this weekend. "So I started writing."
Mr. Rumsfeld regularly reviews the memo, he said. "I pick it up and read it
every couple of months when something comes up." He said the memo shaped his
thinking for the war in Afghanistan and today is guiding his advice to Mr.
Bush as the administration ponders war with Iraq.

One of the memo's passages on public confidence rings loudly at a time when
President Bush is moving to use a vote in Congress supporting an attack on
Iraq as leverage to push for a tough United Nations resolution forcing
President Saddam Hussein to disarm. "If public support is weak at the
outset, U.S. leadership must be willing to invest the political capital to
marshal support to sustain the effort for whatever period of time may be
required," Mr. Rumsfeld wrote. "If there is a risk of casualties, that fact
should be acknowledged at the outset, rather than allowing the public to
believe an engagement can be executed antiseptically, on the cheap, with few
casualties."

Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/14/international/14MILI.html?todaysheadlines


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