Rumsfailed: Too Little, Too Late, Too Much For Bush.
Looks like the real reason Donald Rumsfeld got the heave-ho was not his crippling arrogance and incompetence, but it was the fact that he was no longer being a team player:
WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 — Two days before he resigned as defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld submitted a classified memo to the White House that acknowledged that the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq was not working and called for a major course correction.“In my view it is time for a major adjustment,� wrote Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been a symbol of a dogged stay-the-course policy. “Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.�
And lookee here, he was even going as far as considering the Democrat's cut-n-run/retreat-n-defeat plan:
To limit the political fallout from shifting course he suggested the administration consider a campaign to lower public expectations.“Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis,� he wrote. “This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not ‘lose.’ �
“Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) — go minimalist,� he added. Mr. Rumsfeld’s memo suggests frustration with the pace of turning over responsibility to the Iraqi authorities; in fact, the memo calls for examination of ideas that roughly parallel troop withdrawal proposals presented by some of the White House’s sharpest Democratic critics.
The memo’s discussion of possible troop reduction options offers a counterpoint to Mr. Rumsfeld’s frequent public suggestions that discussions about force levels are driven by requests from American military commanders.
Instead, the memo puts on the table several ideas for troop redeployments or withdrawals that appear to conflict with recent public pronouncements from commanders in Iraq emphasizing the need to maintain troop levels.
As I've already said, Bush already has an exit strategery: to weather out this shitstorm for a couple more years all the while saying how great Eye-Rack is, and having other adults clean up his mess after he leaves. Those who tell him otherwise will need to start printing out their resumes soon.