Secretary of Defense

[heath]

I just learned from this article that Donald Rumsfeld has up until recently mechanically signed condolence letters to families of military personnel that have died in conflict. All other politics aside, this behavior is abhorrent to me. I cannot believe that a man responsible for sending other men into battle wouldn't take a moment to sign

Comments

[bandicoot]

All bureaucrats use mechanical signatures. Big deal. As someone who served in the military, it wouldn't make a bit of difference to me whether someone of that rank actually signed a letter or used a mechanical pen. If it was my CO or my BC, I'd expect a personal touch, but not from the SECDEF. It's another non-story with a political motive.

[heath]

As I said, "politics aside." Obviously, the story is politically motivated. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if he didn't send any letter at all, I expect that's the responsibility of someone lower down in the command chain. It's the fact that he did send them and used a mechanically reproduced signature that bothers me.

[pegasussf]

There's another fact here though, President Bush also sent condolence letters to the families and he signed them himself. So if the President can take the time and sign the letters, what does that say about the SecDef.

[scottks]

I still believe Santa visits all the good boys and girls of the world and gets it all done in only 24 hours.

[sutterite]

It's not like they're falling like dominoes or anything. He has plenty of time and it's not an impossible task.

[grue23]

I would rather the news media covered how poorly the war was planned and is being executed than waste cycles on stories like this. I find it ironic that people say this story is the result of liberal spin - if anything it's a distraction from the real issues and benefits the Republicans more than anyone.

[heath]

Other than the various popular issues like up-armor on humvees, I don't really see any evidence that the war has been planned and executed poorly. Which is not to say that I don't question the motives for entering the war in the first place, I just don't see how it could be done any better given the circumstances. Have any specific references to support your assertion?

[grue23]

I would like to point you to some current Stratfor articles but it's a pay site.

Some bad assumptions were made: the Iraquis would welcome the U.S. with open arms, hostile elements would be gone within the first month or two (recall Bush's premature "mission accomplished"), we would get more support in terms of manpower from allies, and democratization is fun and easy. As a result of those poor assumptions, the troop allocations were much lower than what was needed for a protracted engagement combined with the need to police a large country. There were not enough troops to secure sites of strategic and economic importance, to train Iraquis, or to effectively rebuild the country's infrastructure.

Many current and retired Generals have critized the Bush administration's troop allocations. Googling on "not enough troops in Iraq" yields a number of relevant articles. The Joint Chiefs were asking for several times the number of troops that Bush gave them when they first went in, but Bush and Rumsfield cut the numbers back