Of far greater concern to him was the headlong rush to war in Iraq. It was apparent early on—from two or three days after 9/11, when, with the smoke from the smoldering Pentagon still in the air, Newbold told Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, of plans to go into Afghanistan. "Why are you going into Afghanistan?" he says Feith replied. "We ought to be going after Iraq." (Feith has previously denied saying this; Newbold says he'd take a polygraph on the point. Feith declined to talk to Vanity Fair.) It simply isn't possible now, says Newbold, to fathom how "extraordinarily inappropriate" Feith's comments sounded at the time. Then, at a meeting a few months later, as the Americans chased the leadership of al-Qaeda, he says, he heard Wolfowitz say essentially the same thing. In each instance, Newbold's reaction was the same: "Who cares about Iraq? We have this three-penny dictator, this bantam rooster of no consequence. Besides, they're quiet now anyway—who cares?" (Wolfowitz says he never disputed the need to go after al-Qaeda; the issue for him was whether a war against Saddam Hussein could proceed simultaneously.)

Then came what was, to Newbold, that fateful meeting in late 2001 when Rumsfeld requested the war plan for Iraq. Newbold had just begun his slide show, describing the size of the force and means of deployment, when the belittlement began. "As was his style," Newbold says, "he had already declared the answer, and had already categorized anyone who might think differently as—these are my words—antediluvian, Cro-Magnon, backward-thinking, hopeless. It was so pointed, so derogatory, so negative about the number [of troops required under the existing plan] that General Myers then said, 'If not this number, then what number do you think [the plan] ought to have?'"

It was, Newbold says, a "horrible question." I ask why. "Because that question ought to be answered by those who know most about how to put together a plan that can accomplish the mission," he tells me. "It was no more appropriate than for me to suggest play-calling to [Coach] Joe Gibbs of the Washington Redskins." Rumsfeld's alternative estimate of troops needed was "imbecilic, preposterous," but Newbold failed to object. According to Newbold, so did Myers, and so did Pace, who, when Myers retired as chairman, would be elevated to his spot. "Funny how that works," Newbold observes.

Afghanistan fell in late 2001, and as it became increasingly apparent that a war with Iraq, based on what he considered to be manipulated and cherry-picked evidence, was in the offing, Newbold took the step General Harold Johnson never had: he offered his resignation, to General Jones, the commandant. And it came with a message: Jones should feel free to tell everyone he was resigning in protest. Jones was noncommittal, and Newbold stayed: the president, at least, was still saying war was not inevitable.

But by June 2002, Newbold had given up. He again offered his resignation, even though, by leaving ahead of schedule, he could have lost two stars. This time, Jones accepted. Before departing, Newbold says, he reiterated his objections to the impending war to the chairman, vice-chairman, and key generals and admirals in the Pentagon hierarchy. Such a war was justified, he argued, only if Iraq threatened its neighbors, harbored terrorists, or had weapons of mass destruction. None of those, he believed, was true.

In late September, Rumsfeld and Pace said good-bye to him before the Pentagon press corps. Rumsfeld's press office had put together a joke video for the occasion, built around the "evisceration" clip. Some of Newbold's friends were indignant anew to see a 30-year military career boiled down to a barbed joke. But Newbold, who'd accepted a job at a Washington think tank, took it all good-naturedly. He rejected the usual lavish retirement ceremony at the Marine Barracks—"As I told the commandant, 'I don't want my last act as a Marine to be to make Marines work for me'"—and opted instead for a small gathering at the Army Navy Country Club, in Alexandria. Just about the only man in uniform to come was his old friend John Abizaid. It was poignant, says someone who was there; everyone knew that Newbold was retiring prematurely, and that it was the country's loss. But Newbold himself kept it from becoming too funereal.