'The Donald'

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" - Don and Saddam in happier times (1983).

Calls for the firing or resignation of Donald Rumsfeld are reaching 10 on the Richter scale this week after more public calls for him to step down from recently retired generals. Rumsfeld has weathered similar storms in the past after Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi insurgency, claims of poor planning in the leadup to the war, no 'plan B' in Iraq, the failure to capture Bin-Laden, etc. That said, the 'Decider-in-Chief' has shown nothing but seemingly incomprehensible loyalty to his Koan speaking Secretary of Defense.

During the Vietnam War, though Robert McNamara did serve for seven full years until 1968, there were five different Defense Secretaries, interestingly followed immediately by Rumsfeld himself in 1975. Including this 14 month tenure under Gerald Ford, if he manages to stay on until the end of Bush's term, Donald Rumsfeld will have served longer than any Secretary of Defense since World War II. Furthermore, if one includes the office of Secretary of War that became the Secretary of Defense in 1947, Rumsfeld will have served longer than any Secretary of War/Defense in the our country's entire history (from Wikipedia). Is it just me, or does this seem rather, shall we say, significant.

Now, if as of today Iraq was relatively peaceful with a well trained professional army instead of teetering on the brink of full blown civil war, if the U.S. casualty count in Iraq was a few hundred instead of a couple thousand and climbing, if the Taliban in Afghanistan were truly defeated, if Osama Bin-Laden had been captured and was standing trial (ideally in the Hague), if Abu Ghraib and the other torture controversies never happened, if the Pentagon hadn't been turned into Halliburton's personal piggy bank, if our soldiers had enough body armor and armored Humvees, etc, etc, I could understand the long tenure. Hell, if even a couple of these things were true today I could understand it. But they're not, and as has been said, Bush's 'Bubble' needs some more 'Air holes'. I truly believe that even if his approval ratings go to 1 percent and the Republicans lose control of both houses of Congress in November, Bush still wouldn't even so much as consider asking for Rumsfeld's pink slip.

How long would Rumsfeld last in the board room of the other 'Donald'? About a nanosecond.