Iraq – Rumsfeld's War Plan Shares the Blame

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Washington Post – Thomas Ricks on how Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s leadership of the Pentagon has been weighed by a jury of his peers and found somewhat wanting.

A report by a blue-ribbon panel he appointed to review the military establishment’s role in creating and handling detainee abuse problems at Abu Ghraib prison said that the Iraq war plan he played a key role in shaping helped create the conditions that led to the scandal.

The panel’s findings provide new support for two central criticisms of the Rumsfeld team’s approach in Iraq last year: that the invasion plan called for too few troops, half as many as were used in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and that the Pentagon failed to plan smartly for occupying the country after the United States defeated the Iraqi military.

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History – Rift leaves hundreds of planes in world's bodies of water

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Virginian Pilot – The aluminum carcasses of crashed aircraft at the bottom of Lake Michigan ñ and other wrecks across the world ñ are also at the heart of a clash between two Navy agencies with different ideas on how best to preserve the wrecks. Officials with the National Museum of Naval Aviation want to retrieve the planes and put them on display.
But archaeologists with the Naval Historical Center in Washington, which claims ownership of all Navy aircraft and ship wrecks, believe the treasures may be better left alone.
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