Rummy and Scotty

New York Times, April 7, 2006

Condi and Rummy
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry when you read about the spat between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over whether the U.S. committed any "tactical" errors in the Iraq war.

In case you missed it, Secretary Rice told reporters in Britain last Friday that "I know we've made tactical errors, thousands of them I'm sure," but that the big strategic decision to take down Saddam Hussein will be seen by future historians as correct.

During a radio interview (scroll down for a transcript) on WDAY in Fargo, N.D., on Tuesday, Mr. Rumsfeld responded: "I don't know what she was talking about, to be perfectly honest." Then Mr. Rumsfeld elaborated with a blast of incoherent nonsense about how you always need to change tactics in war: "If you had a static situation and you made a mistake in how you addressed the static situation, that would be one thing. What you have here is not a static situation, you have a dynamic situation with an enemy that thinks, uses their brain, constantly adjusts, and therefore our commanders have to constantly make tactical adjustments."