What He Said

It's not unusual for David Ignatius to say what I'm thinking about Iraq better than I could say it--or think it.

He's right that flexibility is the watchword for the next six months. He's also right that Rumsfeld's inflexibility was the source of most of our troubles in Iraq. Like a mediocre chess player, Rumsfeld could only focus on how cool the next move was going to be. He saw how he could take out Saddam with his modern, light force. He was right--that move worked perfectly. Too bad that the next five moves only elicited the foreign policy equivalent of, "Oops, I didn't see that. Damn."