> Key Rumsfeld Adviser Resigns His Post
Let's hope he goes further away than Otto Reich, who, forced to resign his unconfirmable recess appointment as Assistant Secretary of State in charge of coups, came back the next week doing the same job but in an informal position ungoverned by those rules and with a newly invented ad-hoc title: Special Envoy for Western Hemisphere Initiatives.
Perle might do the same thing to avoid conflict of interest laws which he was under the misimpression didn't apply to the semi-formal position he already holds.
The Chiefs of Staff will round on the civilians when the war is done if it turns out they were right and the civvies were wrong. Doubly so because they've had to put up with being mocked since ever Afghanistan. And that wouldn't be a bad thing, since the soldiers are more sensible than the self-proclaimed cabal. And -- although I can't say this without feeling like a beaten girlfriend who comes back for more -- it will raise Powell's relative standing within the administration.
But I very much doubt that's at work now. Whatever their other professional faults, soldiers don't generally panic and play office politics one week into a war. And a two or three month war would not be ranked a disaster from their point of view. Real soldiers expect the unexpected. And hell, Afghanistan took almost 2 months before it was really finished, and three weeks before the tide was decisively turned. People's expectations are absurd. We've only been at war for 8 days!
Michael