Apr 20    

　　In the innocent days before September 11th 2001, a popular parlour game in Washington was guessing when Donald Rumsfeld would be given the boot. The new secretary of defence had managed to alienate both Congress and the Pentagon bureaucracy. And the press was full of stories about his abrasive style and pig-headed arrogance.

　　September 11th transformed a has-been into a national hero.

　　Then came the Iraq war and the disgrace of Abu Ghraib; the press called for Mr Rumsfeld to go. Now he is under fire once again.

　　There is now widespread agreement on what he got wrong. His biggest mistake was to try to fight the war with too few troops.

　　The most obvious reason, of course, is arrogance. He junked the army's carefully laid plans for invasion (General Zinni's plan called for at least 380,000 troops, for example, far more than Mr Rumsfeld sent). He dismissed warnings from General Shinseki that it would take hundreds of thousands of troops to win the peace. He ignored pleas for more troops on the ground. And he surrounded himself with similarly one-dimensional strategists such as General Franks and yes-men like General Myers.