Sidney Blumenthal

Oy. Dissension in the ranks.

William Odom, a retired general and former member of the National Security Council who is now at the Hudson Institute, a conservative thinktank, reflects a wide swath of opinion in the upper ranks of the military. "It was never in our interest to go into Iraq," he told me. It is a "diversion" from the war on terrorism; the rationale for the Iraq war (finding WMD) is "phoney"; the US army is overstretched and being driven "into the ground"; and the prospect of building a democracy is "zero". In Iraqi politics, he says, "legitimacy is going to be tied to expelling us. Wisdom in military affairs dictates withdrawal in this situation. We can't afford to fail, that's mindless. The issue is how we stop failing more. I am arguing a strategic decision."

One high-level military strategist told me that Rumsfeld is "detested", and that "if there's a sentiment in the army it is: Support Our Troops, Impeach Rumsfeld".

You get the impression that Rummy keeps large metal ball bearings in his pocket, and is overly concerned about who ate the strawberries? I do.

If Rummy and his cabal really believed in building Iraqi democracy, they were, at best, self-deluded fools. They took an unjustifiable risk, and they have failed (Note that they never publicly acted, and still don't act, as if their venture were at all risky). If they knew it was a sham all along, then they, along with the White House, wove an elaborate gossamer web of lies that held just long enough to get the US stuck in Iraq for a decade. The first scenario reveals incompetence; the second, criminal actions on a massive scale.