LESSONS ENCOUNTERED

How System Attributes Trumped Leadership
219
Gates, 21. See also Tenet, 447. Tenet asserts, “We did not have . . . an integrated and
open process in Washington. . . . Quite simply, the NSC [National Security Council] did
not do its job.”
220
Cheney, 449, 462–463; Rumsfeld, 325–329; Feith, 245, 250, 283, 385, 527. Rumsfeld
depicts several specific process limitations that he believed undermined unity of effort,
including an NSC penchant for “avoiding detailed records” to assuming agreement if no
objections to an NSC summary of conclusions were made explicit.
221
Bremer also noted Rice sought compromise over the two options for transfer of political
authority to Iraqis (205–207).
222
Feith, 385.
223
Rumsfeld, 324; Feith, 62.
224
A classic argument to this effect is offered by Senator Henry Jackson: Organizing for National
Security: Inquiry of the Subcommittee on National Policy Machinery, Senator Henry
M. Jackson, Chairman, for the Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate,
3 vols. (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961); and Henry M. Jackson, ed.,
The National Security Council: Jackson Subcommittee Papers on Policy Making at the Presidential
Level (New York: Praeger, 1965).
225
Rice, 15.
226
Franks, 274–277, 330.
227
The author raised the need to prepare for postwar disorder in a staff meeting with
Under Secretary Feith because of lessons learned in a study on Operation Just Cause
conducted by Fletcher School Professor Richard H. Shultz, Jr., for his office years earlier.
The study was later published as In the Aftermath of War: U.S. Support for Reconstruction
and Nation-Building in Panama Following Just Cause (Montgomery, AL: Air University
Press, 1993). Feith mentions the resulting postwar planning effort in his memoir
(362–366).
228
Myers, 175.
229
Cheney, 452.
230
DeLong, 26.
231
Franks, 277–278.
232
DeLong, 27, 135–136.
233
Ibid., 26, 89.
234
Myers, 175.
235
DeLong, 88. See also Myers, 220.
236
Franks, 330. Feith notes that U.S. Central Command had advisors from State and CIA
but none from his office in the Pentagon, which he believes is one reason the schism
opened between USCENTCOM and Policy (371).
269