Andrew Sullivan succinctly explains "The Generals v. Rumskull"

Andrew Sullivan has a post which first described his reaction to the book Cobra II, which was that the Iraq war

was ruined almost single-handedly by one arrogant, overweening de facto saboteur. That man is Donald Rumsfeld. It's actually hard to fathom how one single man could have done so much irreparable damage to his country's cause and standing; and how no one was able to stop him.

My reaction to this was multi-faceted. I agreed with his basic assessment of Rumskull, but I was appalled at the implication that anyone had really tried to stop Rumskull. In my view, Rumskull was not stopped because the Bush administration (i.e., Bush, Big Dick, Wolfowitless, Feith, Perle, etc.) did not want him stopped. Moreover, other people (see names listed in previous sentence) took a direct and active role in causing the damage.

And then I read on and saw that while Sullivan did not directly blame any of the people I named, he also did not blame only Rumskull: "This is not to exonerate Bush and Cheney, who enabled and enable him."

And then Sullivan concluded his post with this:

And it's not to argue that the military shouldn't always ultimately defer to civilian leadership. But when that leadership has been this incompetent, this bull-headed, this reckless and malevolent and petty, the generals have a patriotic duty to speak out. Until this man is removed, we can have no confidence in the conduct of the war; and no confidence in the president as commander-in-chief. It's really as simple as that.

Indeed.