
The Pragmatist: Gates told Bush he wanted to hold top officials accountable for failing veterans
Newsweek
March 19, 2007 issue - The old, macho Bush administration took a certain delight in telling its enemies, at home and abroad, to go to hell. The president seemed to enjoy watching Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld swagger and put reporters down at press conferences in the post-9/11 buildup to the invasion of Iraq. (George W. Bush teasingly called Rumsfeld "Matinee Idol.") Advice from moderates, especially if they had worked in the administration of Bush's father, was generally scorned. And any suggestion from the chattering classes, from the media elites, was likely to push the president in the opposite direction.
But that was then, before Iraq turned into a quagmire, the Democrats won control of Congress, Rumsfeld was eased out and Bush began worrying more about his legacy. When The Washington Post exposed wretched conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Bush team responded as if Texas had been invaded. The behind-the-scenes scramble to rectify the mess at the facility and to take better care of veterans is revealing of a new way of doing things in the Bush administration.
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