Letters to the Editor
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Focus on the troops?
You mean he's finally going to take some body armor to the National Guardsmen who are serving in Iraq?
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Breathtaking hutzpah even for the Bush administration
Imagine that, Von Rumsfeld taking a victory lap through the ruined city of Baghdad. I hope redneck Toby Keith came along to sing "We'll put a boot in yer ass, cuz it's the American waaaaaay."
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Oh, be fair now
Surely you wouldn't want to deny the man his "victory lap".
I'm sure it's all being paid for by the RNC anyway. I mean, they wouldn't really want to stick the American Taxpayer with the tab for this senseless trip. Would they?
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We should have given him a subscription to Army Times
Although it's not the biggest news, thanks for noticing Rumsfeld's extraordinary finger in the eye of the public who vehemently wanted him out, and the military who hate him.
Let's see. Major accomplishments. He sent soldiers and marines to war improperly equipped and denied it. When he was shown to be a liar, he simply ignored it. He has gutted the military with his wet dream of a down-and-dirty small superforce by concocting and prolonging a situation where the troops have been re-deployed, stop-lossed and hurried through rotations to the point of exhaustion. He has created a graveyard of military equipment in Iraq, and left the troops at the lowest state of preparedness in our history. He has cavalierly dismissed the cost in loss of life and limb, and has disrespected the sacrifices of our troops by not fighting to get them the support they need in the field, and when they return. He has ignored the advice of military men whose job it is to manage the war and the troops. It will take generations, if ever, to undo the damage he has done.
That he dares to take a victory lap and high-five the troops in Iraq is so egocentric, it defies understanding. Unless you've been watching the job performance appraisals of the entire Bush band of incompetents.
Heckuva job, Rummy. There's probably a Presidential medal waiting for you when you get home.
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I miss the NY times reason talk.
I know that the new york times is slowly sinking, but, why can't the treason charges that were brought actually be acted on ? A large part of the distorted conversation on many topics, the war included, are unbalanced due to biased coverage by this and other media dinosaurs.
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Why does this surprise?
Here's a guy who has been stroaking himself for six years on the backs of those who amoung them the dead may be better-off than those having to spend an entire lifetime w/o legs, or worse, needing one more egocentric exposure to the very citizens he is responsable for killing and maiming. This fact is the most nauseating of them all..
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A One Way Ticket Would Have Been Sufficient
We could have left him there to patrol the streets of Baghdad on a tour of duty and show everyone how successful he's been? I wouldn't mind my tax dollars paying for that.
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It Ain't So
No, Tim, no! When you're paying with money you don't even have, how can that be counted as a real cost?
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Taking a Bow?
Somehow, I don't think Rummy went to Iraq for one last photo op, or one last time the troops are forced to kowtow to him. I fear he went there to leave us with one last dirty deed to make improvements just a little harder to come by once he's gone. Call it his Legacy Tour, paying his respects to his Iranian friends.
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Rumsfeld and the Costs of War
Here's a great excerpt from the new Vanity Fair article on neocon reaction to the conduct of the war:
[Richard] Perle tells a story he heard from an Iraqi cabinet minister, about a friend who was asked to lease a warehouse in Baghdad to a contractor for the Americans in the Green Zone. It turned out they were looking for someplace to store ice for their drinks.
But, the man asked, wouldn't storing ice in Iraq's hot climate be expensive? Weren't the Americans making ice as and when they needed it?
Thus he learned the extraordinary truth: that the ice was trucked in from Kuwait, 300 miles away, in regular convoys.
The convoys, says Perle, "came under fire all the time. So we were sending American forces in harm's way, with full combat capability to support them, helicopters overhead, to move goddamn ice from Kuwait to Baghdad."
Is this how the asshole Rumsfeld keeps tabs on the costs of George's war -- i.e., how many troops have died so Bremer and the diplomats could have iced mojitos in the Green Zone?
Once Rummy is a private citizen, does anyone mind if I take an aluminum softball bat to the crazy old coots shins?
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Question for the Salon readership
Does any of the Salon readership think, that if our last national mid-term election had been limited to the votes of active duty troops, that it would have been anything other than a large vote of confidence in George W. Bush as President and Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense? Actually, the Salon readership probably thinks like Kerry and Rangel, and that the active-duty U.S. military is composed of poor, dumb minority members of the underclass, and that they all hate their government. That might have been the case with Rangel's fellow draftees into the then-segregated armed forces under Truman, and it might have been the case with the Vietnam-era navy under Lyndon Johnson into which Kerry "volunteered" after his deferment to attend graduate school in France was denied. But it is not today's military.
I think I'd be quite happy if we heard more from the troops on the ground there, instead of that noted military expert, Frank Rich, to give us more direction on what we should do there. Whether our Army and Marines could take effective control of Baghdad if they were given the resources and troop strength to do it.
And whether their morale is boosted by a visit from people like Don Rumsfeld.