Despite the amount of generals, senators, representatives, and regular citizens calling for the ouster of Donald Rumsfeld, it will never happen. Donald Rumsfeld is the representative of the Iraqi debacle, and Bush is now in the legacy-burnishing phase of his failed presidency. For him to let go Rumsfeld is to admit what we all know about Iraq: it was a mistake. George only has a few things left to cling to, and one is his fantasy about liberating Iraq. To ditch Rummy is to ditch the fantasy, and as we all know there’s nothing this president loves more than a little self-delusion.
Rumsfeld stays.
UPDATE: Like I was saying…
You never know
Ok, so when Bush says he doesn’t pay attnetion to polls, he is really saying he doesn’t care what the american people think.
and when he says he listens to the “commanders on the ground”, he really isn’t at all.
I gotta say, when you’re right, you’re right!
Thou hast said it…
So, is he lying about listening to commanders on the ground?
Buma, your vast tactical military planning experience was how long?
Yea, never served, that’s what I thought.
Do you suppose that contingency “planning” can be considered planning, just as operational “planning” can be?
Do you see the modifier “operational” or “contingency” in front of the generals comment regarding planning? No?
Thus endeth the lesson….
First of all, all politicians lie.
All of them.
They hardly ever don’t lie.
The further up the governmental hierarchy you go, the more liars and lying you will find.
So? What’s your point? I’m not going to say he always lies, but I’m not going to say he never lies.
Frank. Seriously. It’s just the two of us in this thread. Are you actually agreeing with me that President Bush lied? I won’t tell anyone, I swear.
Tommy Franks said an interesting thing in the middle of his defense of Bush on Hardball:
On Hardball Friday afternoon, Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of the Iraq war, was defending Defense Secretary Rumsfeld against the recent offensive by the retired generals. In passing, he said this:
“Ask him about the 14 months we spent planning this thing.”
That would put the operational, as opposed to contingency, planning as having started in roughly January of 2002, about eight months later than what was implied in Joint Chiefs head Peter Pace’s statement at the Pentagon briefing earlier this week. — Huffington Post
And here all the wingnuts believed Bush went to war only as a last resort. After all he said so. Saps again.
I am not here.
I would guess that he thought he was listening to the Commanders on the Ground – but it was just Rummy telling him that was what the COTG was saying…
The bottom line is firing Rumsfield does not solve the problem. We had no business going over there in the first place and that’s the responsibility of GWB. And Shrub is not going to resign anytime soon. He’ll just quack his way through the last two years until it’s time for him to go retire to Crawford. Then, as usual, some other poor soul will have to clean up his mess.
I thought this was interesting:
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/articles/article.html?id=13901
Interesting all right!
“The nation is being divided over this war and these blowhard former military leaders have nothing helpful to contribute to the situation. Let’s be clear, we are talking about six former generals.”
Must be hard trying to defend Rummy and Bush at the same time.
Actually, I’m not defending either one. They’re grown men, and do a fine job of defending themselves.
As Rumsfeld (rightly) pointed out, there are thousands of generals.