As a master politician, he of course sidestepped the whole "did we have enough troops in Iraq" question from a fellow Major, and sort of cleared the record of his relationship with General Erik Shinseki. The common perception is that Shinkseki, who was the Army's Chief of Staff in 2003 when the Bush (43) administration was planning the Iraq invasion, basically told Rumsfeld that the invasion plans did not call for enough troops to do the job of defeating the Iraqi Army and taking care of the insurgency that would soon follow. History of course shows that the Bush strategy did not anticipate the insurgency or what it would take to conduct counterinsurgency (COIN) and stability operations (or what we call Phase IV). Rumsfeld, in answering this morning's question, dealt on the facts of his dealings with the erstwhile Chief -- in his view, Shiseki's place was to "train, equip, and organize" the Army vice advise on combat ops, Shinseki never actually spoke up about planned troop levels, the reporter who perpetuated the rumor exaggerated Shinskei's remarks, etc. But Rumsfeld never really answered the heart of the question, which was one I really wanted to ask: in retrospect, do you think we went in with enough troops to do the job? I seriously doubt the world will ever know that answer.
Curiously, Runsefeld stated that the DoD and Intel community structures we have in place now are not adequate for current and future threats. Of course, he maintained the status quo while he was in office -- and his boss made a lot of those decisions with his advice. He also said that it's useless to read history, so we should read biographies instead. Our History professor -- a bona fide Oxford Ph.D. -- of course took exception with that (I believe the word he used was "moronic"). In my humble opinion, maybe that's a big reason why we went to Iraq in the first place.
Fielding a question about civil-military relations, he noted that Presidents are rarely experts at everything (which hopefully garnered me bonus class participation points after I brought up the comment in our last Leadership class later). He even mentioned Gerald Ford -- who, as the only non-elected President, was never an executive of any type before he held the office but after a few months, apparently warmed up to the job.
Another salient point he made, in response to a question about what countries our future national defense strategy and/or national security strategy should focus on, was that we should concentrate on being a deterrent against aggression as well as humanitarian relief whenever possible. He noted that during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Nixon administrations, defense spending was around 10% GDP -- about triple what it is now -- and that any considerations of cutting defense budgets is basically ludicrous. On this, I agree.
So, here he is a few years ago, in all his unknown glory:
