He changed the army headgear to black beret to show that every single person is a special snowflake, an airborne ranger. The rangers complained, so he said they could wear tan berets. Well, what about decades of buried rangers? The whole lot of berets, several hundred thousands, were made in China. The date they were supposed to be mandatory uniforms, the first day of the new fiscal year, was a kerfluffle at army posts across the USA and world, where units didn't open the boxes and read the tags until hours or days before the Chinese-made hats were to be USA military uniforms.

He preached and funded making insanely heavy wheeled vehicles that sort of went into production, and spent far too much money, time, and attention, on these vehicles, in research and marketing. As if he had stock in the company, or was going to be on their board after he retired. It was part of his idea that the entire US army needed to be rapid deployed, and showed complete insanity. Even if you could deploy the entire army, instead of just the very few troops ready to land in a war zone in the first 48 hours (less than 10% of active duty army soldiers), then over a year into the war, wouldn't you have wanted the heaviest artillary and cavalry, instead of still using light stuff that could go anywhere in minutes, but isn't going to last long or shoot far? No, he insisted the US Army would not only deploy within 48 hours, but win swiftly.

So, when he told congress that it would take the entire military years to do what congress what promising would take weeks and a few paltry troops, he was spitting in their face, publicly. Why? Because they knew that, all along. Cheney wrote it down on paper around 1993. Cheney knew it best of all, as did Rumsfield. The leaders who knew it would be a multi-trillion dollar war lasting their entire 8 years in POTUS/cabinet, also knew they couldn't sell that to the public. The protest of the invasion of Iraq was, at that time, the largest protest in the history of humanity. It accomplished zero. The protest did nothing and stopped nobody. But, they still got re-elected, and they will never get prosecuted for treason, or a long list of trespasses against their oathes. General "made-in-china uniforms," general, "everybody is a ranger," general, "don't fund cheap maintenance of track vehicles, just let them phase out as they break down to make room for my hypothetical wheeled vehicles," was just telling the cabinet what they already knew, but didn't want to the public to know, and he said it publicly.