Face of the War

[DesertFox]

A year from now the Libs will be hammering away at him again, and the public will accept it with equal equanimity.

[oracle]

Face of the War (http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/rumsfeld020205.html)
Millions of Viewers Tune In for a Daily Dose of Rumsfeld

By Jim Sciutto
ABCNews.com


W A S H I N G T O N, D.C., Feb. 5 — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has had no shortage of face-time during the war in Afghanistan. But there is one place where his face is increasingly hard to find.

At the Department of Defense Press Office, in a dull metal rack, 8x10-inch glossies of Rumsfeld disappear as quickly as his smile when a reporter asks about the latest on the search for bin Laden. (Photos of President Bush sit mostly untouched nearby.)

Rumsfeld's portrait is 100 percent institutional — suit and tie, American flag, wood-paneled office — but it's apparently a must-have. It's a sought-after memento for women — young and old, news junkies or not — who admit quietly that the 69-year-old grandfather is, well, "hot."

A reporter for one of the networks confesses he's her "biggest crush."

"He's attractive the way any intense, intelligent man is attractive," says another cable reporter. "Plus, he takes what he does seriously — but he doesn't take himself seriously."

Wars have long had their field generals and their pin-ups and, more recently, their media "stars." But never before has one man been all three.

How things have changed. Before Sept. 11, beltway handicappers were picking him to be one of the first Cabinet officials to get sidelined, as he alienated top military brass with his uncompromising approach to "transforming" the military.

But minutes after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Rumsfeld began to make his mark. As the building burned and worries remained that other jets were headed for Washington, Rumsfeld was on the scene, helping rescue the injured.

Pentagon staffers noticed. Many talked about Rumsfeld that morning in almost reverential terms.

Viewers Welcome Rumsfeld Into Homes

In the days and weeks following the attacks, not only did he have a popular and quickly successful war to run, but he had an almost daily appointment inside millions of American living rooms. What viewers found was not your typical government briefer.

While he is legendarily stingy with information about the war (he not only frowns on leaks, he calls them criminal) he talks straight.

Dead civilians are dead civilians; you will not hear the words "collateral damage" from his mouth. He doesn't talk about neutralizing enemy forces, he talks about killing them. (When asked why the Pentagon continued to drop anti-personnel cluster bombs, even though some civilians were mistaking them for U.S. humanitarian food packets, Rumsfeld said "to try to kill" Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.)

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