Bye-bye, Larry

From the Washington Times:

Larry Di Rita, one of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's closest advisers, is leaving the Pentagon. He has taken a senior communications post with Bank of America in Charlotte, N.C.

Mr. Di Rita, a former Navy officer and former Heritage Foundation analyst, was one of Mr. Rumsfeld's first aides to arrive on the scene in February 2001. He handled special projects, press relations and regular squash matches with the 73-year-old defense chief.

Yeah, good ol' Larry. Too little time to go through all his exploits. But here's a snippet from George Packer's book, Assassins' Gate:

The night Di Rita flew into Kuwait in early April, he was briefed by ORHA senior officials, and when the deputy leader of the reconstruction pillar, Chris Mulligan of USAID, spoke about the need to show early benefits to the Iraqi people, Di Rita slammed his fist down on the table. "We don't owe the people of Iraq anything," he said. "We're giving them their freedom. That's enough." A few days later, by which time ORHA officials realized that Di Rita had the full confidence of Rumsfeld, the secretary stood up at a meeting of about fifty people in the Hilton conference room. The State Department messed up Bosnia and Kosovo, he told his audience (which included many foreign service officials), and the Pentagon wasn't going to let that happen in Iraq. "We're going to stand up an interim Iraqi government, hand power over to them, and get out of there in three to four months," Di Rita announced. "All but twenty-five thousand soldiers will be out by the beginning of September."  To Paul Hughes, Garner's planning chief, "It sounded like they were going to package up five pounds of shit in a nice foil wrapper and hand it off and say, 'Good luck.' It might look nice, but it would still be a package of shit."

Good ol' Larry. Wonder when his book deal will be announced?

Comments

[john]

I'm sure he'll be missed. Any chance this is a harbinger for Rummy's departure?

[Fred in Vermont]

Di Rita slammed his fist down on the table. "We don't owe the people of Iraq anything," he said. "We're giving them their freedom. That's enough."

I suppose that Rummy will have some sort of goodbye event where he can say "You've done a hell of a job Rittie."