Rummy's Last Days?
The calls for the head of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are starting to reach fever pitch. Today, William Kristol, mouthpiece of the neocons joined the fray in a scathing op-ed in the Washington Post:
At least the topic of those conversations in the Pentagon isn't boring. Indeed, Rumsfeld assured the troops who have been cobbling together their own armor, "It's interesting." In fact, "if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up." Good point. Why have armor at all? Incidentally, can you imagine if John Kerry had made such a statement a couple of months ago? It would have been (rightly) a topic of scorn and derision among my fellow conservatives, and not just among conservatives.
[...]
All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments. Some have stubbornly persisted in their misjudgments. But have any so breezily dodged responsibility and so glibly passed the buck?
[...]
These soldiers deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have.
Professor Bainbridge and Andrew Sullivan have also kept the drum beating.
I thought Rumsfeld tinged his responses to the soldiers' questions last week with arrogance and an air of dismissiveness. If I were a Humvee driver, asked about the lack of armor, and got a response like:
"As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want," Rumsfeld said.
He added, "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank, and it can [still] be blown up."
...from some guy in a suit who spends most days in an office while I'm in danger of losing a few limbs to an IED, I would be one ticked off soldier.
This has been Rumsfeld MO since the beginning, take the questioner's question, respond with something glib or condescending, then move on. Having watched countless briefings while working on the Hill during the invasion portion of the Iraq war, I don't think Rumsfeld's attitude has changed, and certainly not his belief in his own infallibility. He has always had an air of arrogance about him, and I agree that his arrogance is costing us in Iraq now.
At least the topic of those conversations in the Pentagon isn't boring. Indeed, Rumsfeld assured the troops who have been cobbling together their own armor, "It's interesting." In fact, "if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up." Good point. Why have armor at all? Incidentally, can you imagine if John Kerry had made such a statement a couple of months ago? It would have been (rightly) a topic of scorn and derision among my fellow conservatives, and not just among conservatives.
[...]
All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments. Some have stubbornly persisted in their misjudgments. But have any so breezily dodged responsibility and so glibly passed the buck?
[...]
These soldiers deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have.
Professor Bainbridge and Andrew Sullivan have also kept the drum beating.
I thought Rumsfeld tinged his responses to the soldiers' questions last week with arrogance and an air of dismissiveness. If I were a Humvee driver, asked about the lack of armor, and got a response like:
"As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want," Rumsfeld said.
He added, "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank, and it can [still] be blown up."
...from some guy in a suit who spends most days in an office while I'm in danger of losing a few limbs to an IED, I would be one ticked off soldier.
This has been Rumsfeld MO since the beginning, take the questioner's question, respond with something glib or condescending, then move on. Having watched countless briefings while working on the Hill during the invasion portion of the Iraq war, I don't think Rumsfeld's attitude has changed, and certainly not his belief in his own infallibility. He has always had an air of arrogance about him, and I agree that his arrogance is costing us in Iraq now.
posted by Mike C | 8:26 PM
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