On Wednesday, Donald Rumsfeld joined the bin Laden-anniversary party by declaring that it was “not a tough decision” for Barack Obama to order the Navy Seal raid in Abbottabad, and that to decide otherwise would be “dumbfounding.” Set aside for a moment the fact that a guy as tough as Rumsfeld’s successor as Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, opposed launching the raid. As the NYT‘s Peter Baker notes, Democrats are reminding people of a somewhat similar instance in which Rumsfeld proved rather more gun shy. In early 2005, Rummy aborted an operation to capture senior al Qaeda members in Pakistan, possibly including Ayman al-Zawahiri, at the last minute; a Navy Seal team was reportedly already aboard a C-130 plane in Afghanistan for the mission:

Mr. Rumsfeld decided that the operation, which had ballooned from a small number of military personnel and C.I.A. operatives to several hundred, was cumbersome and put too many American lives at risk, the current and former officials said. He was also concerned that it could cause a rift with Pakistan, an often reluctant ally that has barred the American military from operating in its tribal areas, the officials said.