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Rumsfeld's attitude may be his downfall

The defense secretary's cavalier style boosted his popularity after 9/11. Now, his demeanor faces criticism.

TAMPA - Three months after 9/11, a caricature of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld graced the cover of the National Review.

"The Stud," the headline said.

"Don Rumsfeld, America's New Pin-Up."

"Nearly everyone - Republican or Democrat - sees him as the right guy at the right time in the right job," the magazine said.

Times have changed.

In the uncertain aftermath of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Rumsfeld is under fire from all sides. Now his position in the administration seems less secure.

The problem boils down to Rumsfeld being Rumsfeld: self-confident and unconcerned about what others think. That is not necessarily a good thing, even his admirers acknowledge, at a time when President Bush is politically vulnerable on Iraq.

The traits that boosted his popularity after the terrorist attacks have come to haunt him.

Notorious for belittling the Washington elite, from reporters to the Pentagon brass, Rumsfeld in recent weeks has aimed at a most unusual target: the White House.

Rumsfeld, 71, has violated the president's cardinal rule by taking the administration's internal policy squabbles public.

Three weeks ago, Rumsfeld clashed with Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, over administration policy in Iraq. He brushed aside the working groups set up by Rice and the National Security Council as "little committees."

His tantrum - "Don't you understand English?" he told a foreign reporter working the story - put Bush in an awkward position. The president responded that he was in charge of Iraq policy, not his aides.

Last week, in a confidential memo leaked to USA Today, Rumsfeld offered an assessment of the war on terror that ran counter to White House spin.

He said that the Pentagon was ill-suited to combat terrorism and that there was no way of knowing whether Washington was winning the war on terror. "It's pretty clear that the (U.S.-led) coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another," he wrote, "but it will be a long, hard slog."

Rumsfeld had been pushing to transform the military into a more agile fighting force since joining the administration.

As a result, both the budget and the responsibility of the Tampa-based Special Operations Command, which oversees the nation's secret commando units, grew appreciably after 9/11.

But the timing of the memo, with almost daily U.S. casualties in Iraq, was problematic.

Publicly, the White House backed Rumsfeld. Privately, the administration complained that he had hurt his credibility because, as an official told the New York Daily News, "he's acknowledged that they've all been putting on a happy face about Iraq."

A headline in this week's Time magazine reflected his predicament: "Is Rumsfeld Losing His Mojo?"

Not everybody thinks Rumsfeld is against the ropes. Jack Spencer, a defense analyst with the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think tank with close ties to the administration, blames Rumsfeld's recent travails on the news media "trying to conjure up a story."

"We should be very happy that our secretary of defense is not just sitting by and letting the world go by him," Spencer said, "but instead is questioning the status quo, is understanding that the world is changing before our very eyes, and that if we are to evolve with it, we need to recognize what our deficiencies are, and that's what he's doing."

Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed.

"I think there's no chief of staff, no unified commander, no service secretary that doesn't know we have to make changes," Myers told reporters.

Spencer said Rumsfeld, a former member of Congress, defense secretary in the Ford administration and successful businessman, is still the best man for the job.

"He's seen it all, he's done it all," Spencer said. "He is there purely because he wanted to serve his country. If you're Secretary Rumsfeld, who cares what anybody says."

That's just it.

Critics say he doesn't care what anybody says.

He is willing to take on Rice and powerful members of Congress. Members complain that the secretary often left them in the dark on matters of national security.

Two weeks ago, Rumsfeld didn't help his cause when he angered Sen. John Warner, the Virginia Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee. Rumsfeld drew fire for his handling of the case of Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, the deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence.

In the past, Boykin has characterized the war on terror in religious tones and said that unlike Christians, Muslims worship an "idol."

In a private letter to Rumsfeld, Warner and Sen. Carl Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, questioned the propriety of the remarks.

Rumsfeld never responded to the letter. He later told reporters he knew nothing about it. "It may be somewhere around the building," he said.

The episode illustrated what critics say is his lack of respect for Congress.

"His treatment of the chairman of the Armed Services Committee is more disdainful than I have ever seen," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told reporters. "It's just not appropriate."

In an effort to bury the hatchet, Rumsfeld invited Warner to the Pentagon for sandwiches. He declined to criticize Boykin. But the president did, saying Boykin's remarks did not reflect White House thinking.