In the midst of two and a half wars, at a time when the Army is struggling to transform itself and must use extraordinary methods to find enough soldiers to fill the rotations to Iraq, Rumsfeld selected a man who's never served in the military or in government to be the Army's CEO.
Rumsfeld told the man he's passing over for the job - acting Army secretary Les Brownlee, a retired Army infantry colonel and a highly decorated combat veteran - that he ''wanted a businessman'' to run the Army. Harvey, a longtime Westinghouse executive, was Rumsfeld's second choice in 18 months of bitter wrangling with some powerful senators.
Rumsfeld's long fight with the senators began in May 2003, when he fired Army Secretary Tom White, a retired Army brigadier general, over White's support of then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki (who angered Rumsfeld by saying that several hundred thousand American troops would be needed to occupy Iraq).
When the defense secretary tapped Air Force Secretary James Roche, another defense-industry exec and a Navy and government veteran, to take over the Army job, he ran afoul of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. McCain was demanding that the Air Force and Roche hand over internal e-mails on its plan to lease new airborne tankers from Boeing, and when they weren't forthcoming he blocked Roche and all Defense Department civilian nominees.
While all of this was dragging on, the Army was left in the hands of acting secretary Brownlee, who'd spent 18 years on the Hill working for Sen. John Warner and the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Brownlee, who was awarded two Silver Stars for heroism in Vietnam, spent the last three Christmases with American troops in war zones. Although Brownlee may have been the ideal candidate for the job he was already doing, there was no way Rumsfeld would nominate him. He was angry at how McCain and, more recently, Warner had thwarted his appointment of Roche to run the Army. This time he'd have his way and his man in that job.
Although the service secretaries are political appointees, they traditionally have been chosen from the ranks of those who've served the country in uniform, preferably in the uniforms of the services they've been picked to run.
Rumsfeld ground down his Hill opponents and got his way in the matter of Harvey.
On Tuesday, the day Harvey was confirmed as Army secretary, the Pentagon announced the resignation of Air Force Secretary Roche, the guy Rumsfeld originally wanted to run the Army. There was the usual official statement about how Roche had planned to stay only one term and what a wonderful job he'd done.
Roche, another hard-nosed defense industry businessman of the sort the defense secretary seems to like so well, will leave the Pentagon - along with Air Force acquisitions chief Marvin Sambur - under investigation by the Justice Department for their roles in a $24 billion non-competitive contract for 100 aerial refueling tankers from Boeing.
The Air Force's chief negotiator of that deal and many others, Darleen Druyun, also negotiated herself a $250,000-a-year job with Boeing. She's been sentenced to federal prison. The former chief financial officer of Boeing pleaded guilty for his role in hiring Druyun before she retired from the Air Force.
Rumsfeld himself seems secure in his job as secretary of defense for another year, perhaps longer, in the new Bush Cabinet, even though he and the neo-conservatives around him bear particular responsibility for failures of both planning and execution in securing and rebuilding Iraq.
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Joe Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder and the author of several books, including the national bestseller We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young.
