alienation news

Rumsfeld trying to make foreign policy

President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other top officials are spending hours coping with frequent, unsolicited attempts by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to make foreign policy, according to senior administration officials who are directly involved.
The officials said Bush himself had to quash a Rumsfeld proposal last month to send Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to South Korea to announce that the United States was pulling American troops off the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea.
The announcement, involving no prior consultation with allies, would have come on the eve of new South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's first official visit to Washington.
From his first days in office, Rumsfeld has inundated Washington with a blizzard of memos regarding foreign policy, not usually the responsibility of a defense secretary.
Said one frequent recipient of Rumsfeld's foreign policy ideas and advice: "The theme is control. He wants everyone to have to play on his field."