Michael Novak, still a high priest in the Rumsfeld cult:

What Do You Call a Defense Secretary... [Michael Novak]
...who brings down two hostile, tyrannous regimes in one year, and while a long regional war — actually the first stage in a worldwide war declared by terrorists for the past 20 years — was grinding on also managed the most radical transformation of the American armed forces in sixty years? I call Donald Rumsfeld the best Defense Secretary the U.S. has ever had.

The best we've ever had! Screw (the admittedly much-maligned) James Forrestal, who built the architecture of what a Defense Secretary should be. Screw General Marshall, as well, just for good measure. Screw Bill Perry. When he's secretary in a future administration, screw Tony Zinni.

In case it needed to be said, when the Bush administration needed to invade Afghanistan, Rumsfeld had no idea what to do, and so the CIA stepped in. In Iraq, he did the easiest thing possible: decapitate the regime, and then he was completely lost, by design. As for "transformation," watch the services undermine what Rumsfeld has done -- sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad ones -- and watch his successor undo the rest of the disaster.

This is a perfect example of how the right doesn't know shit about the military. No one who does would ever proclaim Rumsfeld the Muhammed Ali of the Pentagon.