Since it's fashionable to blame Rummy for everything that went wrong in Iraq for awhile --and since Gen. Powell's been in the news this cycle-- I thought
this was interesting. The claim is that Rummy actually foresaw better than most what conditions in Iraq would be like, that any lack of proper equipment for troops was the fault of the Army:
Rumsfeld was also famously charged with shortchanging the troops in Iraq by failing to provide them with the necessary equipment, e.g. armored "humvees." But a review of Army budget submissions makes it clear that its priority, as is usually the case with the uniformed services, was to acquire "big ticket" items. It was only after the insurgency and the IED threat became apparent that the Army began to push for supplemental spending to "up-armor" the utility vehicles.
and that he came by his resistance to putting in more troops honestly:
while it is true that Rumsfeld downplayed the need to prepare for post-conflict stability operations, it is also the case that in doing so he was merely ratifying the preferences of the uniformed military. When it comes to post-conflict stability operations, the real villain is the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine, a set of principles long internalized by the US military that emphasizes the requirement for an “exit strategy.” But if generals are thinking about an exit strategy they are not thinking about “war termination”—how to convert military success into political success.
More here.
