ONE OF US IS GOING TO PRISON, YOU OLD FOOL...:

Meditations on the War … and on Donald Rumsfeld (Nicholas Stix, 22 December 2004, Intellectual Conservative)

Well, it’s official: Don Rumsfeld has been declared the fall guy for the Bush Administration’s prosecution of the War in Iraq. What was that, you ask? “Who made the declaration?” Why, it was those unlikely bedfellows, William Kristol, the New York Times, and Norman Schwarzkopf (Gen., US Army, ret.).

Apparently, everything that has gone wrong in Iraq, has been President Rumsfeld’s fault: He sent insufficient numbers of men to fight the war, he was responsible for the torture at Abu Ghraib, and worst of all, he was insufficiently deferential to the G.I. who asked him at a December 8 public assembly in Kuwait why all U.S. supply vehicles are not armored. What was once seen as refreshing candor is now attacked as “flippancy.”

Don Rumsfeld is a tough guy who doesn’t need me playing sob sister … but I will, anyway. The man certainly has flaws, which include being deaf to any subordinate who has original ideas, and fails to sing along with his choir of admirers; and using an auto-signature machine to sign letters to the families of soldiers killed in action. And yet, as far as I can see, the new campaign to run the Secretary out of Washington on a rail -- how many have there been? I’ve lost track -- has nothing to do with any screw-ups of his.

It's about the failure of areligious neoconservatism to grasp the differences between Shi'ism and Sunni Islam.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 24, 2004 9:48 AM