Losing Feith

Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defence for policy who helped to define the US policy of pre-emption that propelled the invasion of Iraq in 2003, has decided to resign, Pentagon officials say.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday that Feith had told him after the US presidential election in November that he planned to step down by the middle of the year to return to private life.

"I'm hopeful he'll stay until we find an appropriate successor. We have not started looking for one," Rumsfeld said.

[...]

He left his mark on a range of controversial defence policies over this four-year term - the withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, a new policy on nuclear forces, the policy of pre-emption to protect the US against attacks by weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and the much criticised post-war planning for Iraq.
  Aljazeera article

Not to mention his pro-Israel, anti-Palestianian stance or his massaging intelligence to fit the Neocon plan of invading Iraq.

"Feith was a theorist whose ideas were often impractical; among some uniformed officers in the building, he had a reputation for confusing abstract memoranda with results in the field," [Retired general Tommy Franks, who commanded the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq,] wrote in his memoir, American Soldier.

[...]

[Franks] memorably referred to Feith in a pep talk with military planners as "the dumbest [expletive] guy on the planet".

Which may be part of the reason General Franks no longer has his job.