You can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.
Joseph Conrad

Rumsfeld's memo, which became public yesterday, has to be one of the most pandering missive's I've ever seen from a civil servant.

Publicly announce a set of benchmarks agreed to by the Iraqi Government and the U.S. — political, economic and security goals — to chart a path ahead for the Iraqi government and Iraqi people (to get them moving) and for the U.S. public (to reassure them that progress can and is being made).

That's all they need a little motivation, maybe we should think about drafting gym teachers to head over to yell at them.

Stop rewarding bad behavior, as was done in Fallujah when they pushed in reconstruction funds, and start rewarding good behavior. Put our reconstruction efforts in those parts of Iraq that are behaving, and invest and create havens of opportunity to reward them for their good behavior. As the old saying goes, “If you want more of something, reward it; if you want less of something, penalize it.” No more reconstruction assistance in areas where there is violence.

Why don't we just give them shortbread cookies every time they do something right, like good little children?

Begin modest withdrawals of U.S. and Coalition forces (start “taking our hand off the bicycle seat”), so Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country.

Wow, I don't even know where to start with that one.

Last week I said that the argle bargle in Iraq was akin to a revolution, the attitude shown in this memo is very similar to attitudes shown by the English towards the colonies in the 18th century which led to the US revolution.