THE FORCE OF THE FUTURE
In Rumsfeld's world, all that was long ago. For weeks he has been itching to get back to wrestling his real nemesis, not Saddam or Osama bin Laden but what he sees as the need to remake the military to fight villains like them for the next 25 years. Known as transformation, the initiative was the first fight he picked when he returned to Washington in 2001. At the time, he wanted to shrink the military and reduce its footprint overseas, in part by cutting the Army by two or three divisions. There was talk of killing cold war weapons just entering production and buying lethal ones instead. Rumsfeld also earmarked additional billions to build a national missile shield. Transformation was meant to prepare the U.S. fighting machine for enemies that looked less like nations and more like groups of stateless terrorists. The military first tried to stall, then fight and then outlast him. Rumsfeld reacted by dismissing the generals who didn't like his ideas and finding some who did. Resistance inside the Army was so deep that Rumsfeld brought back a retired four star, Pete Schoomaker, to be his Army chief of staff rather than promote an active-duty general—a move that still sends shudders through the service.

But even after 9/11 changed everything, it didn't change Rumsfeld's zeal to reform or the essential outlines of his plan. Some of his ideas are very specific. He is weighing whether to move U.S. military bases out of Western Europe now that the cold war is over and shift forces east to Poland and Romania to be closer to the hot spots of the Middle East. He has asked the Navy whether its constant presence in, for example, the Mediterranean makes it harder to steam quickly to conflicts elsewhere. He wants the Air Force to think less about pilots in expensive jets and more about inexpensive unmanned drones carrying smart munitions. In a legislative tour de force in November, he pushed through Congress an overhaul of the Pentagon's civil-service rules that will allow Defense Secretaries far more leverage to hire, fire and shift people around in the military's entrenched white-collar bureaucracies. The themes of all these moves are speed, stealth and efficiency—doing more with fewer people and fewer weapons—much as they were in the two wars he just fought. "Transformation is not about things, and it's not about technology," says General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Its about how you think about things and how you change cultures."

There are signs that Rumsfeld himself may emerge transformed from his battle for transformation. He has been under pressure from Congress to expand the military by at least two divisions, or 20,000 troops. The Secretary resisted that pressure over the summer and fall, but in his conversation with TIME , he said he was studying the plan more closely, opening the door to a deal. "We may need a bigger army ... I don't see any analysis or any studies that persuade me that it should be larger or smaller at the moment. I'm commissioning them. I'm getting them done. And if they say we need a larger one, I will, with alacrity, recommend it, and it may very well be the case." But if Rumsfeld is flexible, it is only to a point. He remains firmly opposed to a return to the military draft. He has often said today's volunteers are smarter and more dedicated than conscripts. His feelings about this run deep: he was one of the original advocates of an all-volunteer force as an Illinois Congressman back in the 1960s. Transformation, it turns out, began long ago.

LIFE IN RUMMYLAND
You would think, especially after the capture of Saddam, that Rumsfeld could pack it in, go out on top and settle down in that ranch in Taos, N.M., that he co-owns with, among others, Dan Rather. Boyhood chum Ned Jannotta, who ran Rumsfeld's first campaign for Congress in 1962, notes that Rumsfeld has never cared about staying anywhere very long. "He doesn't look for security in his life," says Jannotta. "It gives him great freedom to do and try and risk and fail. He's prepared to go head to head—winner take all, no second-place money—and still fail. That runs through his life." Even in his government jobs, Rumsfeld has not stayed put for very long. "My theory," he says, "has always been, you put your head down and work hard, and good things happen."

At times he has operated with the impunity of a man who has nothing to lose. A senior official tells the story of a situation-room briefing to coordinate a policy decision last winter. At the top of an organization chart that had been passed around the table were the initials nsa. "What's nsa?" asked Rumsfeld, who had once been a White House chief of staff. "That would be me," replied Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser, as jaws dropped quietly around the room at Rumsfeld's impertinence. The Pentagon has often behaved as if it were on its own timetable, uninterested in or even ignorant of diplomacy or politics. Two weeks ago the Pentagon posted on one of its websites a previously released announcement that only the 62 coalition allies could participate in U.S.-funded postwar contracts, needlessly angering other nations at the very moment Bush had sent James Baker to some of those countries in search of debt relief for Iraq. White House officials have a name for the Pentagon. "It's Rummyland," said one aide. "They just do what they want."

But if you are looking for clues about whether he will stay, don't waste your time. You will find too many leads pointing in opposite directions. Rumsfeld is hardly oblivious to his image; at times it's his principal weapon. When he's preparing for press conferences, he limbers up, firing questions at aides, wondering aloud, What am I gonna get asked? These pregame warm-ups, a former aide explained, are designed to get him in the mood to match wits with reporters and "are as much about psychology as content." Few believe his "long, hard slog" memo of October—in which he frankly warned of a much more difficult war on terrorism and his concern that Washington was still poorly organized to fight it—was leaked without his O.K. Many think it was written to put him on the right side of history in case he departs the government next year.

Rumsfeld once remarked to an aide that Washington is uncommonly generous to those with ambition. The capital offers those who like the game not just one or even two but three acts, with room for plenty of reprises. Having served in Congress in the 1960s and in the White House in the '70s, Rumsfeld is well into his third act, and it appears that he may be looking to extend his latest tour. He has recently purchased a weekend place outside Washington on Chesapeake Bay—an indication that he might like to re-up a few more years.

If so, he will be ready for any new fight that comes along. Near the end of his recent talk with TIME , Rumsfeld was asked how he has so much energy. There's coffee on the table and energy bars stashed away across the room, but before the question was even finished, he was dashing over to his formal desk, bending over and lifting two black-and-white dumbbells hidden under it, each weighing 15 lbs.

"They're nothing," he said, as he started to do curls. "Nothing!" After a few reps, he was on the move again, over to his stand-up desk. He whipped open a drawer and pulled out one of those little spring hand exercisers. And then he reached into the same drawer with his other hand and pointed to a small paper box the size of a jewelry box. With one hand pumping, smiling broadly, he lifted the lid. The music started, filling the vast room. It was Sousa, loud and brassy and in your face: Stars and Stripes Forever.

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