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The April 28 article “For next defense chief, pressing challenges await” includes this statement in the second paragraph: “In some ways, anyone who replaced [Donald] Rumsfeld would have been a success.” Is this an opinion of the writer and the Stars and Stripes editorial staff?

This article does not appear to be written as an opinion column (op-ed, I believe you call it). I thought that reporters were supposed to report the facts and I find that statement and the one preceding it about Donald Rumsfeld being “prickly” as nothing but opinion.

I would agree that Donald Rumsfeld was unpopular, which seems to be the only pseudo-fact of that section of the article. He was unpopular because of suggestive reporting like this article, which proclaims that anyone would have been a success following Rumsfeld.

The facts actually show he was not a failure.

I would offer that the reporter and Stars and Stripes editors read Rumsfeld’s book “Known and Unknown: A Memoir.” I am not necessarily a Rumsfeld fan, but I believe that articles like this one, and many more before it, sway readers to believe that Rumsfeld was the worst thing that ever happened to the Department of Defense. That is an unfair and biased assessment with only opinion to support it.

Lt. Col. Bradley K. Bragg

Forward Operating Base Hughie, Afghanistan

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